Liberty City Seven

The Liberty City Seven were seven construction workers and members of a small Miami, Florida-based religious group who called themselves the Universal Divine Saviors.

Ultimately, the charges centered on the FBI's belief that the group was seeking money in order to commit a terrorist act.

[4] Juan Cole wrote that: It seems pretty obvious that they are just a local African-American cult which mixed Judaism, Christianity and (a little bit of) Islam.

Now a relative of one of the members, Phanor, said that they wore black uniforms with a star of David arm patch and considered themselves of the Order of Melchizadek ...

Batiste's relatives described him as a "Moses-like" figure who roamed his neighborhood wearing a robe and carrying a crooked wooden cane as he recruited young men, based his teachings on those of the Moorish Science Temple of America.

[7] According to the indictment, Batiste told an FBI informant posing as an al-Qaeda member around December 16, 2005 that he was organizing a mission to build an "Islamic Army" in order to wage jihad against the United States with his "soldiers" to destroy the Sears Tower.

He requested a list of materials and equipment needed to wage jihad, including boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios, and vehicles.

At this meeting, Batiste took possession of a video camera and promised to obtain "good footage" of the North Miami Beach FBI building.

Around March 24, 2006, Patrick Abraham drove Batiste by car by the FBI and the National Guard Armory buildings in Miami-Dade, Florida.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, at a press conference that day, said that the men had been taped promising to fight a "full ground war against the United States.

Also involved was Charles James Stewart of the Moorish Science Temple in Chicago, a convicted rapist who was paid through the FBI informant to join the group in April.

[11] Narseal Batiste (also known by some as "Prinze Nas"), 32, is a father of four and a martial arts enthusiast, who had been a member of the Guardian Angels in Chicago.

Although no links to outside terrorist groups were alleged, nor any weapons found,[12] the arrests were the subject of a high level press briefing in Washington D.C. hosted by the Attorney-General[13] and made headline news in Europe the following day.

[14] The Director of the FBI Robert Mueller cited the incident in a "Major Executive Speech" in Cleveland that afternoon entitled "Protecting America from Terrorist Attack: The Threat of Homegrown Terrorism".

The warehouse they were in had been wired for surveillance and provided rent-free by the FBI since January, and members of the group discussed the terrorist plots with the undercover agents present while smoking marijuana.

[16] Their trial began on 2 October 2007 with the threat of up to 70 years in prison if convicted of all charges,[17] and ended on 13 December with one defendant acquitted and the jury unable to return a verdict on the other six, for whom a retrial was scheduled for 7 January 2008.

Prosecutors presented evidence drawn from 15,000 FBI recordings, including one in which Narseal Batiste said they would make sure no one survived destruction of the 110-story Sears Tower, and another which features ceremony in which each member of the group swears allegiance to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

[22] On December 13, 2007, after nine days of deliberations, the jury acquitted Lyglenson Lemorin, who had left the group and moved to Atlanta months before the arrests but were unable to reach a verdict on the other six.

Deportation is considered a civil proceeding, where double jeopardy protections do not apply and a lower standard of clear and convincing evidence is used rather than reasonable doubt.

[28] After being detained by immigration authorities for three years, in Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana, he was deported to Haiti on January 20, 2011 while his appeal to an Atlanta federal court was pending.

[29] The following April, Lemorin was not permitted to return for the funeral of the 15-year-old son he had fathered in the United States, who remained in the U.S. and was struck while trying to push a stalled vehicle off the highway.

[13] At the press conference, the Attorney-General and the Deputy Director took questions from reporters: He assured the public that the men posed no actual danger because their plot had been caught in "its earliest stages", and that the group's only source of money and weapons would have been the undercover FBI agent.