Three brothers, three life terms

"We dreamed an American dream," Ferik Duka says, lighting another cigarette. "We loved this country. We still do."

Across the spacious Cherry Hill living room, his wife, Zurata, nods.

So does their son Burim, whose older brothers, Dritan, Shain, and Eljvir, are serving life sentences for conspiring to kill American military personnel at Fort Dix.

The charges followed a 16-month federal investigation that yielded hundreds of hours of surveillance video and audio recordings. The trial in U.S. District Court in Camden took three months, and jurors deliberated for six days before delivering their verdict Dec. 22, 2008.

"The jury found them guilty," says Burim, 24, who attended the proceedings. "But they didn't know the truth."

For the Dukas - a family of ethnic Albanian Muslims who emigrated to the United States illegally in 1984 - the truth is this: Dritan, Shain, and Eljvir were targeted because of their religion.

"If you practice [Islam], you're going to be profiled," Ferik, 69, says. "Practicing my faith does not make me an extremist."

He and his wife insist that their three older sons, all of whom were under 30 when they were arrested May 7, 2007, were manipulated by a sketchy pair of paid government informants who goaded them into appearing to support violent jihad.

The Dukas describe their sons as hardworking family men too busy doing good deeds in the community to be radicalized.

They say Dritan and Shain were entrapped into illegally buying AK-47s and other firearms. Men of Albanian extraction, Burim explains, love guns.

And all three brothers, the family contends, were convicted by a legal system that since the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been willing to believe the worst about young Muslim men.

The brothers' friends Mohamad Shnewer and Serdar Tatar also were charged and convicted, inspiring headlines about a "Fort Dix Five" terror plot.

"My sons are innocent," Zurata says. "Why would they [want to] destroy this country when they were working [as roofers] to build this country?"

Although she and her family blame the guilty verdicts partly on the media, they are heartened that The Intercept and other online, as well as print, publications are raising questions.

"For many scholars, lawyers, and human-rights advocates, the Dukas' case remains one of the most egregious post-9/11 entrapment cases," notes Sally Eberhardt, a researcher for Educators for Civil Liberties in New York City.

"There's not a scintilla of evidence . . . that links any of the Duka brothers to a planned or even speculative attack on Fort Dix or any other military personnel," says New York lawyer Robert J. Boyle, who represents the three.

Boyle filed a motion in February 2014 asking the federal court in Camden to vacate the convictions and sentences. It contends that the Duka brothers were "coerced" by their lawyers against testifying at trial.

The motion also asserts that the jury ought to have been instructed that inflammatory speech - Osama bin Laden being described as a "good" man during one taped conversation - is constitutionally protected.

The motion, which makes several other critical assertions, is pending before the trial judge, Robert B. Kugler.

Meanwhile, the Duka family prays for the day when Dritan, Shain, and Eljvir are released.

"It's a terrible feeling to lose three brothers," says Burim, who, along with his sister, was born in the United States.

He dropped out of Cherry Hill East to work full time in the family's roofing business after the arrests. With his dad retired, he's running the company - and helping raise several of his essentially fatherless nieces and nephews.

Like Burim, I have three brothers. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to see them convicted of a crime I didn't believe they'd committed.

The case against the Duka brothers was largely circumstantial; perhaps there were procedural flaws in the trial as well.

But I'm deeply troubled by the illegal gun purchase. The notion that the brothers needed AK-47s for target practice in the Poconos verges on absurd.

"We hope and we expect," Ferik says, "that the truth will come out."

I can't be as sure as he that the truth will set his sons free.