FBI Says 7 Terror Suspects Were Mostly Talk

In a four-count indictment unsealed Friday, federal officials charged seven men caught in a sting operation here with conspiring to support Al Qaeda and “levy war against the government of the United States.”

Authorities arrested the suspects -- whom Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales characterized as “homegrown terrorists” -- after searching a warehouse in the impoverished Liberty City area north of downtown Thursday. They said the men, ages 22 to 32, never presented any real danger.

The indictment suggested they never came in contact with anyone from Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network. The only materials they received during the seven months they were monitored by an undercover informant appear to have been six pairs of boots and use of a digital video camera.

“You want to go and disrupt cells like this before they acquire the means to accomplish their goals,” U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said at the federal courthouse in Miami, flanked by two dozen federal, state, county and local officials involved in disrupting the alleged plot.

The men were charged with conspiring to violate a sweeping anti-terrorism measure that makes it a crime to provide “material support” for terrorism, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. That law has been used successfully against scores of defendants since the Sept. 11 attacks.

But this case was developed exclusively through information provided by the undercover operative, a circumstance that could allow defense lawyers to argue entrapment.

Some of the men had minor criminal records. One is a Haitian citizen in the United States illegally, five are American citizens, and one had a residence permit. None was known to be an adherent of a militant Islamic faction, nor even of the Muslim faith. Relatives described some as religious, but drawn together to study the Bible, not the Koran.

With little more than age, Caribbean heritage and poverty in common, the suspects were said by FBI Deputy Director John S. Pistole to be “more aspirational than operational.”

No weapons were found in the raid of their reported meeting place, Acosta said. He declined to say what, if anything, was seized.

On Friday, law enforcement agents wearing flak jackets and carrying automatic rifles stood guard over the windowless building in a shabby lot.

The Miami CBS affiliate, WFOR-TV, filmed the warehouse interior through a hole in a corrugated aluminum shutter, showing a brown sofa and dining set. It appeared to be the same room shown in photos that Acosta’s office released from a surveillance tape of the suspects, time-stamped shortly after 10 p.m. March 16 -- one of a dozen meetings mentioned in the indictment.

The seven charged are Narseal Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Stanley Grant Phanor, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin and Rotschild Augustine of Miami and Lyglenson Lemorin of Atlanta.

Acosta indicated that further arrests were not expected. “I’m confident we have identified every individual who had the intent of posing a threat to the United States,” he said.

Five of the Miami suspects -- it was unclear why Phanor was not among them -- appeared Friday at a brief hearing to determine whether they needed a public defender. Lemorin was arraigned in Atlanta. Relatives of Lemorin told reporters he had gone to Miami to find work but had returned months ago after discovering the men he had befriended were involved in witchcraft. Several of the suspects are of Haitian origin, a culture with voodoo influences.

According to the 11-page indictment, Batiste recruited the others and, around November, expressed interest to the informant in assisting Al Qaeda. The informant allegedly met with Batiste on Dec. 16 and was given a list of materials “needed in order to wage jihad” -- including boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios and vehicles.

Six days later the two reportedly met again, and Batiste allegedly outlined his mission to wage war against the U.S. government and to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago and public buildings in Miami.

He gave the informant a list with his and five of the other men’s shoe sizes, and soon received the military boots. Batiste repeatedly discussed five fellow “soldiers” with the informant, the indictment said. The only mention of Phanor in court papers was as a driver for the informant to a meeting in the Florida Keys. Batiste later asked for binoculars, bulletproof vests, firearms and $50,000 in cash, according to the indictment.

During meetings this year, Batiste said he wanted to wage war against the United States to “kill all the devils we can” in a mission that would “be just as good or greater than 9/11,” the indictment says.

Federal officials in Washington declined to say how the idea of working with Al Qaeda came to the defendants, or whether it might have been planted by the government’s informant. The indictment makes clear that the informant told authorities of Batiste’s alleged interest in joining Al Qaeda before going undercover for the government.

On Friday, Justice Department officials said the case was an example of the government’s success at rooting out plots before they came to fruition.

“This case clearly demonstrates our commitment to preventing terrorism through energetic law enforcement efforts aimed at detecting and thwarting terrorist acts,” Gonzales said at a news conference.

He also said, “These men were unable to advance their deadly plot beyond the initial planning phase.”

But, he said, they had taken enough steps to justify criminal charges -- including seeking out uniforms and weapons, conducting reconnaissance of Miami targets, and swearing an oath of allegiance to Al Qaeda.

He said that under the anti-terrorism law, it did not matter that the “Al Qaeda representative” they were dealing with was an operative with the South Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Paul J. McNulty said in a separate briefing, “We really don’t have the option of waiting for the plotters and conspirators to take the next step.”

The Miami case was the latest in which the Justice Department used undercover operatives.

Federal prosecutors recently won a jury verdict in a terrorism case in Lodi, Calif., based largely on the testimony of an FBI informant who encouraged one of the suspects to attend a terrorist training camp.

A government informant also is involved in a case in Toledo, Ohio, in which three men are accused of conspiring to aid the insurgency in Iraq. The informant reportedly went so far as to meet one defendant in Jordan when the suspect allegedly was seeking to enter Iraq to wage jihad.

Some legal observers said the Miami indictment appeared to be based on little evidence, raising questions about where the Justice Department was drawing the line between criminal activity and unsavory thoughts and words.

“It sounds to me like this is loose talk, and yet the government makes it sound like a detailed plan,” said Stephen Hartman, a criminal defense lawyer in Ohio who is representing a defendant in the Toledo case. “It raises some real concerns: What does it take to get the FBI on your back on something like this?”

Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond law school in Virginia, said he was perplexed by the government’s reference to threats being “homegrown.”

“I suppose that the government is saying: ‘Better we err on the side of indicting these people.’ But that raises other questions of racial profiling and free speech,” Tobias said.

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Williams reported from Miami and Schmitt from Washington.