After back-to-back mistrials, five men from one of Miami's poorest neighborhoods were convicted Tuesday of trying to join with al-Qaida in plots to topple Chicago's Sears Tower and bomb government buildings in South Florida.
After back-to-back mistrials, five men from one of Miami's poorest neighborhoods were convicted Tuesday of trying to join with al-Qaida in plots to topple Chicago's Sears Tower and bomb government buildings in South Florida.
Though a sixth man was acquitted in the terrorism sting operation, the verdict allows federal prosecutors to claim overall victory in a Bush-era case that dragged on for years and cost millions of taxpayer dollars.
Defense lawyers have said their clients were harmless dupes entrapped by government informants, and they vowed to appeal.
The defendants convicted in Miami federal court were Narseal Batiste, 35; Patrick Abraham, 29; Rotschild Augustine, 25; Burson Augustin, 24; and Stanley Grant Phanor, 33. Naudimar Herrera, 25, the sixth defendant, was found not guilty of all charges.
Herrera said the co-defendants, all friends of his, never plotted any terrorist acts and should have been acquitted as well.
"It's not right," he said. "They don't deserve none of this. I know them."
The group, arrested amid much fanfare in 2006, became known in the media as the Liberty City Six after the 2007 acquittal of a seventh defendant, Lyglenson Lemorin, 34, at the first trial. Lemorin, a Haitian national and legal permanent U.S. resident, is in immigration custody and fighting a deportation order based on the terror allegations.
According to prosecutors, the men, led by Batiste, wanted to bring down the U.S. government and sought an alliance with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaida to carry out attacks.
The group's aims included blowing up the 110-story Sears Tower, poisoning salt shakers in restaurants and launching terrorist attacks "just as good or greater than 9/11," prosecutors said.
After the verdict, Jonathan Solomon, special agent in charge of the FBI's South Florida field office, said the nation was a "much safer place" because of the prosecution.
Defense lawyers said their clients had been set up by overzealous government informants.
"This is not a terrorism case," Batiste's lawyer, Ana Jhones, said in her closing argument. "This is a manufactured crime."
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The defendants worked for a construction company owned by Batiste and met for religious study in a warehouse in Miami's Liberty City neighborhood. They initially came under investigation when an area convenience-store clerk from Yemen reported to the FBI that Batiste was seeking support from Middle Eastern terrorists.
The FBI had the clerk introduce Batiste to an undercover informant posing as an al-Qaida financier.
A key piece of government evidence was a grainy videotape showing the men swearing an oath of loyalty to al-Qaida. Some of the defendants conducted photo surveillance for a fictional plot to bomb the FBI headquarters in Miami, according to evidence in the case.
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