Trial Begins for 7 Accused of Plotting to Destroy Sears Tower

MIAMI, Oct. 2 -- Narseal Batiste cut a striking figure on Miami's toughest streets.

He sometimes wore a white turban and carried a six-foot staff. He proselytized to the homeless and drug dealers. He and his followers recruited others to join them for Bible and Koran studies at their meeting place, a ramshackle storefront they called "The Temple."

"Narseal Batiste could only be characterized as a wannabe religious leader," his attorney, Ana M. Jhones, said Tuesday.

Now the question before a jury is whether Batiste, 33, was more than that, whether he and his rag-tag group of six followers seriously intended to ally themselves with al-Qaeda and to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago -- or whether they were just pretending.

As outlined in opening statements Tuesday, the prosecution's case is based upon months of work by two paid FBI informants, identified as Abbas al-Saidi and Elie Assad, who presented themselves to Batiste and his followers as having terrorist connections.

The key piece of evidence is a videotape from March 2006 showing one of the informants leading the seven defendants in a purported oath of allegiance to al-Qaeda.

"These defendants wanted to wage jihad against the United States, and they tell us so in unequivocal detail," Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Gregorie told jurors.

But in their opening statements, the defense attorneys said that their clients had only feigned interest in terrorism to win the $50,000 that the FBI informants, posing as al-Qaeda representatives, were dangling before them.

Despite a wealth of wiretaps and videotapes made of the defendants, the defense noted, there is scant evidence that the men expressed any interest in al-Qaeda when they were not in the presence of the informants -- indicating that it was only an act tailored to that audience.

The defense depicted the FBI's two informants as "con men" trying to make money from the government by creating a terrorism case -- even if it meant provoking a somewhat hapless, financially strapped group of men into showing an interest in terrorism.

The evidence gathered, prosecutors said, includes not only the videotape of the oath, but recordings including references to putting poison in restaurant saltshakers and starting a street war in the United States climaxed by the explosions of landmark buildings.

The men, several of whom worked in construction trades and were relatively poor, also conducted martial arts training at the Temple, which was located in the impoverished Liberty City neighborhood, using knives, swords and "nunchucks," prosecutors said.