After a two-month trial and nine days of deliberations, a Miami jury acquitted one of the Liberty City 7, Lyglenson Lemorin, and failed to convict the other six. The judge declared a mistral on all unresolved charges. The men—two Haitians and five African Americans—were on trial for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack on the FBI’s Miami headquarters and the Sears Tower in Chicago.
The outcome is a major blow to the U.S. government. The Seven join at least a dozen other “terrorism” defendants
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Since the mistrial was announced on Dec. 13, the government has moved quickly to clean up its mess. A retrial of the remaining defendants is set to begin on Jan. 7, 2008. The government also has refused to release Lemorin from jail and is trying to deport the permanent resident for “administrative immigration violations.” (Miami Herald, Dec. 21, 2007)
When the men were indicted in June 2006, officials declared that it was a major victory in the fight against “homegrown terrorism.” Media headlines read that the disrupted plot was “even bigger than Sept. 11.”
Then U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales warned that the men were prepared to “wage a full ground war against the United States.”
However, the seven men from the critically impoverished South Florida community of Liberty City were never connected to any maps, written plans or weapons that could back these overzealous claims.
Most of the material presented as evidence during the trial resulted from the FBI’s “investigation.” The key component was a video that allegedly showed the group, led by the informant, taking an “oath” to a “terrorist” group. The defendants were charged with, among other things, “conspiracy to provide material support to Al-Qaeda.” But the only contact that they had with “Al-Qaeda” was through an FBI informant.
The warehouse where the group allegedly was hatching their plot was paid for and provided by the FBI.
It was a government informant who provided the initial suggestion that they join with Al-Qaeda. The informant provided them with a camera and car to photograph buildings in Miami.
In the trial, defendant Narseal Batiste’s lawyer argued that the men only began cooperating with the informant posing as an “Al-Qaeda representative” because they were desperate for the $50,000 that the informant promised them. They planned to start a construction business with the money.
Batiste in fact pawned the camera he was given by the informant for $56 in order to feed his family a few days after taking the “surveillance” photos.
U.S District Judge Joan Lenard, displaying her clear bias to the government’s case, obstructed the Seven’s attorneys from bringing up relevant information about the nature of the FBI informants who helped ensnare them. Lenard is the judge who presided over the unjust Miami trial of the Cuban Five.
Two informants, who were paid $130,000 dollars to work on the case, have questionable pasts. One informant, a former snitch for the New York Police Department, promised to work against the Liberty City 7 to overcome charges of beating his girlfriend.
The other, also with a domestic battery charge on his record, failed a polygraph test administered by his FBI handlers while working on a previous case in Chicago. According to Justice Department regulations, an informant who fails an agency administered polygraph test gets his security clearance revoked and is deemed “unreliable.”
‘War on terror’ hits home
Judge Lenard allowed the prosecution to call neo-conservative professor Raymond Tanter, a founding member of the Iran Policy Committee, as a witness. The former Reagan administration official explained the logic of the government’s case clearly when he testified that the Liberty City 7 were “dangerous terrorists” who had reached the “jihadization” stage.
To the U.S. ruling class, working-class men and women who become highly alienated from a society ravaged by exploitation, racism, and oppression of all types are deemed potential “terrorists.” The so-called war on terror is a war on oppressed and exploited people across the world. Working-class people in the United States also are targets.
The Liberty City 7 case, and cases like it, are purely political in purpose and reason. The frequent “terror alerts” and prosecutions are necessary to justify Washington’s criminal policy toward the people of the Middle East.
Politicians from both major bourgeois parties are guilty of arming the right-wing militias of Cuban exiles that live only blocks away from Liberty City. Real terrorists who live in South Florida—like Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and Jose Basulto—walk free because both the Republicans and Democrats support their pro-imperialist aims.
