(THE INTERCEPT) Murtaza Hussain AND Razan Ghalayini — Chris Christie has trumpeted his role in the prosecution of men behind a foiled New Jersey terror plot. But new evidence reveals how the accused were set up by authorities before being sentenced to life in prison.

On the evening of May 7, 2007, 48-year-old Lata Duka was doing dishes in the kitchen of her home in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, when she heard a loud bang come from the front of the house. “It wasn’t a normal sound. I was very scared,” Lata recalls nearly a decade later.

Thinking someone was breaking in, Lata grabbed a chair from the kitchen table and hoisted it above her head, waiting for the intruder. Moments later a swarm of armed men burst through the front door and ran into her kitchen. “Put the chair down or I’ll shoot!” she says one exclaimed, pushing his gun against her chest.

The armed men were FBI agents and other law enforcement officials. As they searched the house, one of the men approached Lata. He was smiling.

“He kept asking me, where are my sons!” Lata remembers. “Just smiling and going up and down the stairs, asking me all the time, where are your sons? I told him my sons were at work. He just kept smiling at me.”

Lata didn’t know that at roughly the same time, authorities were conducting raids at separate locations in Cherry Hill to arrest her three sons, Dritan, Shain and Eljvir Duka. Over 100 officers and agents were involved in what at the time was one of the most high-profile counterterrorism arrests in the post-9/11 era.

 

Source: Christie’s Conspiracy: Terror Plot of the Fort Dix Five