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Jury In Fort Dix Case Hears About Informant

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Oct 27, 2008 8:42 pm US/Eastern

Jury In Fort Dix Case Hears About Informant

CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) ―

Click to enlarge 1 of 1: The jury in the Fort Dix terror plot case heard about the role of informant Mahmoud Omar on Monday.
William Thomas Cain/Getty Images

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Being an FBI informant pays. That's what jurors learned Monday in the case of five men accused of planning to shoot soldiers on Fort Dix.

John Stermel, an investigator assigned to an FBI counterterrorism task force, spent Monday morning explaining to jurors the role of the informant, Mahmoud Omar, who wore a wire for 16 months in the investigation.

For his help, Omar will have received some $185,000 in payments by year's end, plus reimbursement for $25,000 in expenses and nearly $29,000 in rent.

Weekly payments of $1,500 began in August 2006, the month Omar went with one of the men, Mohamad Shnewer, to check out Fort Dix and other military installations in New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania. From that time on, Stermel said, investigators needed the informant to be available to them around the clock; Omar used to sell used cars.

The government has also paid Omar's $1,400-a-month rent since someone working for a defense lawyer in the case tracked him down more than a year ago, Stermel said.

Stermel said Omar's help has also led to three criminal convictions on fraud cases unrelated to the alleged Fort Dix plot.

Anticipating defense attacks to Omar's credibility, Stermel was asked by a federal prosecutor about Omar's missteps. Among them: He tested positive for marijuana once while on probation; he admitted selling a Social Security number and was caught in a bank fraud case for which he has not been prosecuted.

Omar is set to testify next—though that might not begin until Tuesday.

Defense lawyers say that it was Omar who tried to plot an attack, not their clients. No attack happened.

The suspects—all foreign-born Muslims in their 20s who spent years in Cherry Hill—are all charged with conspiracy to kill military personnel and attempted murder.