Seven members of a fringe religious group were being held in Miami on Friday after being charged with planning a terrorist attack they hoped would be ”greater than 9/11”, starting with the destruction of the United States’s tallest building, the Sears Tower in Chicago.
The men are accused of conspiring ”to work under al-Qaeda’s direction and control” to wage war against the US by bombing the 110-storey tower and the FBI’s Miami headquarters and launching attacks in at least three other cities.
FBI agents arrested the men — five US citizens, one permanent resident and one illegal immigrant — late on Thursday, after storming a warehouse in Miami’s poverty-stricken Liberty City neighbourhood, using a blowtorch to remove the door. The anonymous-looking building had reportedly been used by a group calling itself the Seas of David, which blends Christian and Muslim teachings. Members trained, studied and slept there.
The indictment alleges that Narseal Batiste, also known as Brother Naz, was the ringleader of a conspiracy that involved recruiting soldiers for jihad. In mid-December last year, the FBI says, he held a meeting in a hotel room with a person he believed to be a representative of al-Qaeda. In fact, the man was working undercover for the south Florida joint terrorism task force.
Over several months of meetings, Batiste allegedly swore a loyalty oath to al-Qaeda and outlined his plans for a ”full ground war” in which his group would ”kill all the devils we can”. He provided a shopping list of demands, including radios, bullet-proof vests, machine guns, binoculars, cars and $50 000 in cash, the indictment alleges. The undercover operative also provided Batiste with camera equipment, which he used to collect footage of the Sears Tower and the Miami FBI building.
The authorities are not alleging that Batiste’s group obtained explosives, or had contact with genuine members of al-Qaeda. But at a news conference in Washington, Alberto Gonzales, the US Attorney General, paid tribute to ”the fine work of law enforcement” that, he said, prevented the plot from going forward.
John Pistole, the FBI’s deputy director, said the Seas of David ”did not believe the United States government had legal authority over them”.
Residents living near the warehouse, which Batiste called ”the embassy”, described a group of between 40 and 50 men, many in their late teens and early 20s, who ”seemed brainwashed” and appeared to be running a ”military boot camp”. But a Liberty City man, identifying himself as Brother Corey, and who said he was a member of the group, insisted they were not terrorists.
”This is a place where we worship and also have businesses, as a work site and as a construction company we are trying to build up,” he told CNN.
The FBI has, on several occasions, used undercover operatives posing as terrorist sympathisers to gather evidence of potential attacks.
Last month, a Pakistani immigrant, Shahawar Siraj, was found guilty of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in New York City after months of meetings with an FBI informant. His defence lawyer argued that the informant had, in effect, created the crime by stoking his client’s rage. — Guardian Unlimited Â