Federal prosecutors have announced they will pursue a third trial in the case of the Liberty City 7— seven black men fighting bogus charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism.
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The five African Americans and two Haitian immigrants originally charged are from the Miami, Fla., Liberty City neighborhood—one of the most deeply impoverished areas in the country.
In a twisted case of entrapment, an FBI-paid informant posed as a man with connections to Al-Qaeda who would pay the men $50,000 to work with him. The informant set up the group in a government-funded and wired warehouse, where they recorded over a thousand hours of conversations between the men and the informants.
The seven men never had any connection to any maps, written plans or weapons that would actually enable them to carry out such an attack; and, the only connection they had with Al-Qaeda was the phony one supplied by the U.S. government. Nevertheless, in June 2006, police and FBI agents descended on the staged warehouse and arrested the men, charging them with several counts of conspiracy to commit terrorism.
At that time, the government touted the arrests as a breakthrough in the early detection of “homegrown terror.” Media headlines described the disrupted plot was “even bigger than Sept. 11.” Alberto Gonzales, U.S. attorney general at the time, was beside himself. Gonzales called a press conference and warned that the men were prepared to “wage a full ground war against the United States.”
In reality, these men were destitute—unemployed, semi-employed and sometimes homeless. Narseal Batiste, the group’s alleged “ring leader” and a father of four, testified during his trial that he and the others went along with the scheme in order to get the $50,000 promised by the informant. He said he was behind on rent and that his children had no clothes and no food. Indeed, a few days after taking the “surveillance” photos, Batiste pawned the camera he was given by the informant for $56 in order to feed his family.
The second mistrial is a major blow to the U.S. government. The Seven are part of at least a dozen other “terrorism” defendants whose cases have resulted in acquittals and mistrials since Sept. 11, 2001.
Throughout the proceedings, Judge Joan Lenard consistently displayed her bias, preventing attorneys of the Seven from bringing up relevant information about the questionable credibility of the FBI informants. Lenard also presided over the unjust Miami trial of the Cuban Five—Cuban men convicted on a number of politically motivated bogus charges for monitoring the terrorist activities of Miami-based Cuban counterrevolutionaries.
The two informants, who were paid $130,000 dollars to work on the case, have records of domestic battery charges. One 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 must have his security clearance revoked and is deemed “unreliable.”
While the innocent must fight for their freedom, Democrats and Republicans alike continue to allow real terrorists such as Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and José Basulto—who live only blocks away from Liberty City—to roam about freely. Both of the dominant bourgeois parties consider such criminals to be valuable weapons in their imperialist arsenal.
The case of the Liberty City 7 is an outrageous example of the ruling class’s efforts to put a face on terror—invariably the face of the oppressed—at home and abroad. The frequent “terror alerts” we see on television and the slanderous prosecutions are necessary to justify Washington’s criminal policy toward the people of the Middle East.
The prosecution’s decision to pursue a third trial when it obviously does not have a case amounts to nothing but the persistent harassment and racist persecution of innocent men. Free the Liberty City 7 now!
