Fort Dix case causes collateral damage

The government never accused Muslim Tatar, a 55-year-old pizza shop owner, of doing anything illegal.

But Tatar says his life fell apart after his son was among six men charged last May in connection with a plot to attack Fort Dix.

He sees his son, who he says is innocent, only through the glass wall at a federal detention center. He has been called a terrorist - and worse. He has health problems. He lost his pizza shop and struggled to find another job as a part-time cook.

"My mortgage is behind," he said. "Everything's a big problem. My family life all collapsed."

Tatar's plight illustrates a sad truth about the way the world works: Those accused of crimes get their day in court for a jury to decide whether there's proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The U.S. Constitution, however, offers no protection for how the public might react and treat their families.

Even if Tatar can restore his image, it won't bring back his beloved pizza shop where he used to work 16-hour days.

Tatar, who speaks softly, is hardly the only person who has seen his life undone emotionally or financially because of criminal charges against a family member.

In the Fort Dix case alone, the 12-year-old sister of one suspect reported being assaulted at school and called a "terrorist." The children of the suspects have not seen their fathers for most of a year, except in court. The wives of two of the men, including Tatar's son, have given birth without their husbands around. And the father of three other suspects has said his roofing business lost contracts because of the charges.

Tatar told his story at the Cherry Hill office of Richard Sparaco, the defense lawyer for his son, Serdar Tatar.

Muslim Tatar was in his late 30s when he came from his native Turkey to the United States in 1992. He dreamed of working as a photographer. He ended up as a cook.

His cooking career went well. In 2002, the former Cherry Hill resident opened his own place, Super Mario's Pizza & Restaurant in Cookstown, 15 miles southeast of Trenton in the heart of New Jersey's military area. The shop sat across the road from McGuire Air Force Base and less than four miles from the Army's main gate at Fort Dix.

The name of Tatar's shop came from an old video game, but his pizza came from a family recipe more than a century old, he said.

His original staff consisted of his son, daughter and son-in-law. They sold pizza by the pie or the slice in a small restaurant that had booths around the edge of a dining room and tables in the middle.

Most of their customers had something to do with the military, and Tatar offered discounts for people in uniform. For five years, he sponsored softball teams on and off the base.

"We had a very nice relationship, the customers and I," said Tatar, who had moved to Cookstown.

Eventually, Tatar said, he hired a military person at Fort Dix, an installation used mostly to train reservists, to make deliveries on that base.

A few years ago, his newlywed son Serdar stopped working at the shop and started working instead at a 7-Eleven in Philadelphia. The legal immigrant moved to the city's Bustleton section and dreamed of becoming a police officer or joining the military.

The young Tatar - who dropped out of Cherry Hill High School West in 2000, when he was in 11th grade - even applied for police jobs in Philadelphia and Oakland, Calif. Tatar's attorney, Sparaco, denied a Philadelphia police official's suspicion that the young man applied with the intent to do harm to law officers.

Serdar Tatar, then 23, and five friends were arrested on May 7 and charged with roles in plotting the attack, which was not carried out. One has since pleaded guilty to weapons charges.

The remaining five could face life in prison if they are convicted. A trial is scheduled for September.

Federal authorities, in a case built with extensive help from two paid informants, said the men planned to sneak onto the base and shoot soldiers.

Authorities became aware of the men, all foreign-born Muslims in their 20s, after a clerk at a Circuit City store in Mount Laurel reported what he had seen in a video he was asked to transfer to DVD in January 2006. The video showed men firing weapons and, according to authorities, chanting "God is great" in Arabic.

At the time of the arrests, U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie said that Serdar Tatar had delivered pizzas to Fort Dix.

According to charging documents, one of the other suspects, Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, was caught on tape telling a government informant: "Why did I choose Fort Dix? Because I know that Serdar knows it like the palm of his hand."

But Muslim Tatar said that isn't true. He says his son did not make pizza deliveries to the base.

A map of Fort Dix used by pizza shop drivers also became an issue in the case.

In November 2006, Serdar Tatar called Philadelphia police and reported that someone was pressuring him to provide a map of Fort Dix, and that he feared the request was terrorist related.

Later that month, he was caught on tape, authorities say, telling a government informant he would give him a map, even though he had the suspicion - correct, as it turned out - that the man was working for the government.

"It doesn't matter to me, whether I get locked up, arrested, or get taken away. It doesn't matter. Or I die, doesn't matter. I'm doing it in the name of Allah," he said on the tape, according to a court filing.

Sparaco said the map was not classified. He said it was far less detailed than maps available on the Internet.

The demise of the pizza business began abruptly three days after Serdar Tatar was arrested, his father said.

That's when an editorial cartoon in the New York Post showed two soldiers buying a pizza from a bearded, turban-wearing man with a gun. The pizza box says "Super Mario's Pizza," and inside, along with a pizza, are a bomb, stick of dynamite and hand grenade.

Hate mail started rolling in, he said, along with a few notes of support - and even some checks from people sad about the way the unaccused pizza entrepreneur was being treated.

Tatar tried to sell the shop before he lost it, but the prospective buyer backed out.

Tatar put up a banner that said "Under New Management" anyway. And he went ahead with a quick name change, calling the place Palermo's Pizzeria & Steak House.

The signs didn't change anything.

Customers such as Chad Vessels, who used to like the cheesesteaks at Super Mario's, stopped eating there.

Vessels, who works at an occupational training center that serves military people, said there was a stigma attached to Tatar's pizza place.

"We didn't want to get involved with it," he said.