The men, who were arrested in 2007, were found guilty of conspiracy to kill military personnel. However, they were found not guilty of attempting to kill US soldiers and employees of the United States, a court official told AFP.

Six suspects were arrested initially, four of whom were from the former Yugoslavia, one from Jordan and the other from Turkey. One of the men pleaded guilty to a reduced weapons charge while the rest were convicted in the Camden, New Jersey court on Monday.

The suspects, including a pizza delivery man who allegedly used his job to case the army base, were arrested on May 7, 2007 as they tried to buy automatic rifles.

During a 16-month sting operation, two undercover FBI informers infiltrated the group and recorded their conversations about launching an attack on Fort Dix army base, federal prosecutors said.

The plot was foiled after a shop clerk alerted police to a "disturbing" video that the suspects had made of themselves and asked to be burned to a DVD.

Prosecutors said the footage showed the accused firing guns in militia-style, calling for holy war and shouting "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is greatest."

One of the suspects, Mohamad Shnewer, a Philadelphia taxi driver, allegedly told an informant that six or seven "jihadists" planned the operation on Fort Dix to kill "at least one hundred soldiers" by using rocket-propelled grenades or other weapons, the New Jersey US attorney's office said.

"My intent is to hit a heavy concentration of soldiers," Shnewer was quoted as saying in the charge sheet. "You hit four, five or six humvees and light the whole place (up) and retreat completely without any losses."

The White House and law enforcement officials said the group apparently had no ties to international terrorist networks, but the FBI had described the case as representing a new kind of "homegrown" terrorist threat.

Prosecutors said the suspects sought out detailed maps of Fort Dix and also scouted other military installations as possible targets, including a naval site to be attacked during the annual Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia.

White House Homeland Security advisor Frances Townsend told CNN at the time of their arrest that the men had "in their possession the last will and testaments of two of the 9/11 hijackers."

Five of the suspects were charged with conspiracy to murder US soldiers and the sixth defendant, who pled guilty, was accused of aiding the suspects in acquiring illegal firearms, the US Attorney's office said.

The men stood accused of attending training sessions in the Pocono mountains in Pennsylvania, trying to acquire AK-47 assault rifles and other weapons, and reviewing "terrorist training videos," according to federal prosecutors.

Three of the suspects, Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, were brothers and ethnic Albanians who worked as roofers. Their parents smuggled them into the United States as children in 1984. "We can do a lot of damage with seven people," the eldest, Dritan Duka, allegedly said on an FBI tape.

The men, aged between 22 and 28 at the time of arrest, "had no clear motivation other than their stated desire to kill United States soldiers in the name of Islam," The New York Times reported.

Though they considered several targets, the men "picked Fort Dix largely because one of their fathers owned a restaurant nearby that delivered to the base," the report said.

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