One of five men charged with plotting to attack Fort Dix circulated an al-Qaida recruiting video from behind bars, and a co-defendant tried to send a note to a fellow inmate referring to the fight “we weren’t able to finish,” authorities say.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office made the allegations in a brief filed in U.S. District Court late Tuesday to try to oppose the suspects’ request to be granted bail.

A lawyer for one of the men charged said the government is misrepresenting an incident in the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia.

The five men _ all foreign-born Muslims in their 20s _ were arrested in May and charged with conspiring to kill military personnel at Fort Dix, an Army base used primarily to train reservists for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Each has pleaded not guilty. A sixth man pleaded guilty to providing weapons to some of the five charged in the alleged conspiracy.

In the latest legal filing, the government said Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer gave another inmate a copy of an al-Qaida-produced DVD last month. Guards found the disc in a book in the detention center’s law library.

“The fact that defendant Shnewer and, perhaps, his co-conspirators may be spreading jihadist recruitment videos to other inmates clearly raises grave security concerns,” government lawyers said.

Shnewer’s lawyer, Rocco Cipparone, said Shnewer did not give the other inmate the video and was upset that the inmate got hold of evidence that only defendants in the case were supposed to see.

The government also said suspect Eljvir Duka and another inmate were passing notes. In one note, the government said, he wrote, “Now you see why we were going to sacrifice all for the sake of Allah in jihad” and referred to the fight “we weren’t able to finish.”

The government said detention center staff confronted Duka about the notes. According to the filing, he acknowledged he was passing them but said they only dealt with “issues such as the quality of the food” behind bars.

Duka’s lawyer, Troy Archie, did not return a voice mail or e-mail message Tuesday night.

A hearing on the men’s bail motion is scheduled for Dec. 20.