By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 14, 2007
MIAMI, Dec. 13 -- A federal judge declared a mistrial for six men from a fringe religious group here after a jury said it was deadlocked on charges that they conspired to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and instigate a war against the United States.
A seventh man, Lyglenson Lemorin, 32, was cleared of all charges.
The outcome was a setback to prosecutors in a case that Justice Department officials said reflected the threat posed by "homegrown terrorists" who they said could mount attacks as deadly as those of Sept. 11, 2001.
But evidence presented at the trial portrayed the "Liberty City Seven" as a group of somewhat hapless low-income laborers, and defense attorneys said the men had become ensnared in what they characterized as an overzealous FBI investigation.
"It was evenly split on a lot of counts," said jury foreman Jeff Agron, 46, an educator at a local synagogue. "You wish you could reach a decision -- but it is what it is."
The U.S. Attorney's Office issued a one-sentence statement indicating only that the case will be retried.
As the decisions were announced, the men showed little emotion. Some frowned.
The acquitted man, Lemorin, cried and buried his head in his hands after the verdict.
"He was ecstatic," said his attorney, Joel DeFabio.
Lemorin will not be immediately released, however. He is a Haitian immigrant, and authorities have placed an "immigration hold" on him.
Two months before the June 2006 arrests in the case, Lemorin had apparently quit the Liberty City group and moved to Atlanta, working in a mall.
Jurors acquitted him because "there was evidence that he was distancing himself from the group," Agron said.
The seven defendants had been affiliated with a chapter of the Moorish Science Temple, a sect that combines elements of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, and operated out of a ramshackle building in Liberty City, one of this city's poorest neighborhoods.
Their leader, Narseal Batiste, known as "Prince Manna," proselytized on street corners at times carrying a staff and wearing a white turban.
Batiste came to the attention of the FBI in October 2005, when, according to prosecutors, he asked a local storekeeper of Middle Eastern descent to find help "back home," a word the storekeeper said was understood to mean al-Qaeda.
The man alerted the FBI, which arranged for a confidential informant who posed as an al-Qaeda operative and met with the group.
Batiste, wearing his white turban and carrying the staff, met the confidential informant at a Radisson hotel on Dec. 16, 2005.
"I'm exhausted financially; that's why I'm here," Batiste told the informant.
The heart of the prosecution case consisted of FBI videotapes and audiotapes. One showed the seven men swearing allegiance to al-Qaeda. In another recorded conversation, the group's leader proposed knocking down the Sears Tower, which, as he described it, would topple and cause a disastrous wave to rise from Lake Michigan.
Defense attorneys repeatedly argued that if not for the confidential informants, there would have been no conspiring or talk of destruction.
No explosives, military weaponry or written attack plans were found when the FBI searched the group's headquarters here.
It was one of the two informants, posing as an al-Qaeda organizer, who led the men in the al-Qaeda oath.
The FBI informant also suggested a separate plan to bomb FBI offices in Miami and other cities.
Taking the stand on his own behalf, Batiste testified that he had never wanted to blow up the Sears Tower and that he had described the outlandish Sears Tower plan to the undercover informant in hopes of gaining as much as $50,000 in support.
He was asked where he got the idea for the Sears Tower plan.
"Just from watching the movies," Batiste, 33, testified. "I just made it up. I didn't know anything about this sort of thing."
Jurors were divided over the defense argument that Batiste was simply trying to con the purported al-Qaeda representative for money.
The "theory of it all being a scam," Agron said, divided jurors.
"Frankly, I didn't see much evidence of that," he said. "Others saw it there."
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