MIAMI — In a four-count indictment unsealed Friday, federal officials charged seven men caught in a sting operation here with conspiring to support Al Qaeda and "levy war against the government of the United States."
Authorities arrested the suspects -- whom Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales characterized as "homegrown terrorists" -- after searching a warehouse in the impoverished Liberty City area north of downtown Thursday. They said the men, ages 22 to 32, never presented any real danger.
The indictment suggested they never came in contact with anyone from Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. The only materials they received during the seven months they were monitored by an undercover informant appear to have been six pairs of boots and use of a digital video camera.
"You want to go and disrupt cells like this before they acquire the means to accomplish their goals," U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said at the federal courthouse in Miami, flanked by two dozen federal, state, county and local officials involved in disrupting the alleged plot.
The men were charged with conspiring to violate a sweeping anti-terrorism measure that makes it a crime to provide "material support" for terrorism, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. That law has been used successfully against scores of defendants since the Sept. 11 attacks.
But this case was developed exclusively through information provided by the undercover operative, a circumstance that could allow defense lawyers to argue entrapment.
Some of the men had minor criminal records. One is a Haitian citizen in the United States illegally, five are American citizens, and one had a residence permit. None was known to be an adherent of a militant Islamic faction, nor even of the Muslim faith. Relatives described some as religious, but drawn together to study the Bible, not the Koran.
With little more than age, Caribbean heritage and poverty in common, the suspects were said by FBI Deputy Director John S. Pistole to be "more aspirational than operational."
No weapons were found in the raid of their reported meeting place, Acosta said. He declined to say what, if anything, was seized.
On Friday, law enforcement agents wearing flak jackets and carrying automatic rifles stood guard over the windowless building in a shabby lot.
