Verdict Seen Monday In U.S. Army Base Plot - Judge

A federal jury deliberating whether five Muslim men are guilty of planning to kill soldiers at a U.S. army base expects to deliver its verdict on Monday, the judge said on Sunday.

U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler said the jury had ended a fifth day of deliberations and would return on Monday when they expect to conclude.

"They said they expect to be finished tomorrow," Kugler told reporters and attorneys after the eight-week trial.

The foreign-born men are accused of conspiracy, attempted murder and firearms charges in the alleged plot to attack New Jersey's Fort Dix army base in 2006 and 2007 with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

They were arrested in May 2007 after a 14-month investigation in which two FBI informants infiltrated the group and obtained hundreds of hours of audio and video recordings that prosecutors said showed the men planning to carry out an attack.

The defendants, all in their 20s, are Yugoslav-born ethnic Albanian brothers Eljvir, Dritan and Shain Duka, illegal immigrants who ran a roofing business in New Jersey; Mohamad Shnewer, a Jordanian-born taxi driver from Philadelphia; and Serdar Tatar, a Turkish-born convenience store clerk.

A sixth man who pleaded guilty to supplying firearms to the group was sentenced in March to 20 months in prison.