MIAMI — At the opening Tuesday of a federal trial of seven terrorism suspects, jurors were asked to settle a question that has dogged the case since its disclosure 16 months ago:
Did the FBI foil a 2006 plot to bomb Chicago's Sears Tower, or did it finance a fictitious plot to serve as an election-year victory in the war on terrorism?
The seven men from Miami's poorest neighborhood who have been dubbed the Liberty City Seven stand accused of conspiracy to levy war against the United States and to provide material support to Al Qaeda, charges that could send them to prison for 70 years.
During a trial that is expected to last three months, the government plans to present audio and videotaped evidence from an FBI sting operation in which the defendants allegedly discussed bombing the 110-story Chicago landmark and an FBI office in Miami Beach.
The attacks were designed to trigger chaos that would allow the men to take over the country and eventually the world, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard Gregorie in his opening statement.
"These defendants came together with the sole purpose of creating a holy war against the United States," Gregorie said of the men, ages 23 to 33. Their plot involved "things as small as poisoning salt shakers in restaurants and as big as blowing up the Sears Tower in Chicago and killing any survivors."
The plots were reportedly hatched by Narseal Batiste, a construction odd-jobs worker and self-styled religious figure who paraded around Liberty City in flowing robes and a head wrap, carrying a shepherd's staff. He called himself a sheik, preached against drugs and domestic violence at a corner park on Sundays and, with the other six defendants, formed a Miami chapter of the Moorish Science Temple, a sect that blends Christianity, Islam and Judaism and claims autonomy from the U.S. government akin to that of Native American tribes.
Batiste's lawyer, Ana Jhones, said her client's only crime was suffering delusions of grandeur. A "wannabe religious leader," he told two informants posing as Al Qaeda liaisons what they wanted to hear to get the $50,000 offered for help in waging attacks against the U.S., she said.
Batiste received $1,000 to pay an unspecified lawyer's fee over the nine-month sting operation. The other six defendants each got a pair of boots.
Federal agents conceded after arresting the men in June 2006 at a dilapidated warehouse they called the Embassy that their alleged mission to attack U.S. targets was "aspirational more than operational."
