WILMINGTON -- A man must stand trial in a plot to hire a hit man to behead three witnesses from his brother's terrorism case, a U.S. judge ruled Friday.
After a daylong preliminary hearing, Magistrate Judge Robert B. Jones Jr. also ordered Shkumbin Sherifi held without bail.
Sherifi, 21, was arrested last weekend after FBI agents tracked him to a meeting Jan. 8 in the parking lot of a Wilmington grocery store with a government informant posing as the representative of a hit man. He is accused of paying the informant $4,250 toward the first killing while his mother waited nearby in a Honda minivan.
On Jan. 22, prosecutors said, Sherifi met with the informant again, this time receiving fake photos that showed the blood-covered witnesses lying in a shallow grave and what appeared to be the man's severed head.
Officials say the plot to execute the witnesses was masterminded by Sherifi's imprisoned brother, Hysen Sherifi, 27. Hysen Sherifi was sentenced to 45 years this month for his role in a conspiracy to attack the Marine base at Quantico, Va., and targets abroad.
An FBI agent testified that Shkumbin Sherifi left the meeting Jan. 22 with the informant and went directly to the New Hanover County Detention Center. After a meeting with his brother that the FBI monitored, Shkumbin Sherifi was arrested as he left the jail with the photos in his possession.
Also arrested was Nevine Aly Elshiekh, 46, a special education teacher from Raleigh who the FBI said served as a go-between for the Sherifi brothers and the confidential informant, providing an initial $750 payment for the killing. Her first court appearance is scheduled for Feb. 3.
Those targeted for death, according to the government, were three confidential informants who testified against Hysen Sherifi and his co-defendants during a lengthy terrorism trial that began shortly after the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Hysen Sherifi and two other Raleigh men were found guilty of terrorism-related offenses, while three other accused co-conspirators pleaded guilty.
During Friday's hearing, defense lawyer James Payne suggested Shkumbin Sherifi may have believed he was providing the money to pay for a lawyer for his brother's appeal, and stressed that in hours of phone calls and meetings taped by the FBI he never directly ordered anyone to be killed.
Jones said the government had probable cause to arrest Sherifi, asking why anyone would hire a lawyer in a clandestine meeting held inside a car.
"We have an individual who was in a Food Lion parking lot giving someone $4,000," the judge said.
Sister testifies
The Sherifis are naturalized U.S. citizens who emigrated from Kosovo in 1999 after a bloody sectarian war. On Friday, one of their three sisters took the stand as a character witness and asked the judge to let her brother go home. Hylja Sherifi, 24, said her brother was a primary caregiver to their ailing father, who has lung cancer.
Shkumbin Sherifi also has volunteered as a youth soccer coach and is an aspiring songwriter, she said. Some of his rap songs are online on a website intended to promote his music.
"He has a lot of passion," said Hylja Sherifi, a college student. She added that her family loves the United States.
"I have hope in the American government and support America," she said. "I supported my boyfriend when he was fighting in Iraq for 13 months."
Farris Barakat, 21, a college student who attended the hearing, said Elshiekh was his second-grade teacher at the mosque's school. At the time of her arrest, she was also teaching at a secular Montessori academy in suburban Morrisville. Elshiekh is charged with using interstate facilities for murder for hire.
Barakat stressed that he did not in any way support the type of violence that the Sherifis are accused of plotting.
Islam is a religion of peace, he said. However, he asked whether an overzealous government was seeking to prosecute Muslims for terror offenses using questionable tactics, such as paid informants with criminal records.
Asked on the stand whether any evidence presented Friday had changed her view of her brother, Hylja Sherifi said, "Not at all."
