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US to pursue third trial in alleged Sears Tower
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By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer
Federal prosecutors stung twice by deadlocked juries
said Wednesday they will make a third attempt to convict
six men accused of scheming with al-Qaida to topple
Chicago's Sears Tower and bomb FBI offices in several
cities.
The decision was announced at a hearing before U.S.
District Judge Joan Lenard, who declared a mistrial last
week in the second trial because jurors could not agree
on any verdicts. The first trial in the "Liberty City
Seven" case ended the same way in December, except that
a seventh defendant was acquitted.
It was not immediately clear when the third trial would
begin. Defense attorneys planned to seek bail for
several of the men, who have been in custody since their
highly publicized June 2006 arrests.
Prosecutors contend that alleged ringleader Narseal
Batiste and the other defendants hoped to conduct
terrorist attacks that would start a broader
anti-government insurrection. Each of the men faces up
to 70 years in prison if convicted of four
terrorism-related conspiracy charges.
Batiste, 34, has denied terror ambitions and claimed he
was only discussing fictional attacks with paid FBI
informants in hopes of conning one of them out of
$50,000. The backbone of the prosecution's case is
hundreds of hours of FBI recordings of those
conversations.
One key videotape depicts an al-Qaida loyalty oath
administered to the group by one of the informants, who
was posing as a terrorist network emissary known as
Brother Mohammed.
The Bush administration had hailed the defendants'
arrests as a prime example of the post-Sept. 11 strategy
of preventing terrorism plots in the earliest possible
stages. Yet there was no evidence the group ever
acquired explosives or took concrete steps toward
staging any attacks; they did have a handgun and a few
machetes.
Batiste testified that he wasn't serious about an
alliance with al-Qaida and that the group's goal was to
uplift the impoverished Liberty City neighborhood. The
men adhered to a sect called the Moorish Science Temple,
which blends elements of Christianity, Judaism and Islam
and claims authority beyond the U.S. government's.
Authorities are seeking to deport to Haiti the man who
was acquitted in the first trial, 33-year-old Lyglenson
Lemorin. All but one of the remaining defendants are
U.S. citizens.
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