Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

A Governing Philosophy Rebuffed
Ruling Emphasizes Constitutional Boundaries

For five years, President Bush waged war as he saw fit. If intelligence officers needed to eavesdrop on overseas telephone calls without warrants, he authorized it. If the military wanted to hold terrorism suspects without trial, he let it.

Now the Supreme Court has struck at the core of his presidency and dismissed the notion that the president alone can determine how to defend the country. In rejecting Bush's military tribunals for terrorism suspects, the high court ruled that even a wartime commander in chief must govern within constitutional confines significantly tighter than this president has believed appropriate.

For many in Washington, the decision echoed not simply as a matter of law but as a rebuke of a governing philosophy of a leader who at repeated turns has operated on the principle that it is better to act than to ask permission. This ethos is why many supporters find Bush an inspiring leader, and why many critics in this country and abroad react so viscerally against him.

At a political level, the decision carries immediate ramifications. It provides fodder to critics who turned Guantanamo Bay into a metaphor for an administration run amok. Now lawmakers may have to figure out how much due process is enough for suspected terrorists, hardly the sort of issue many would be eager to engage in during the months before an election.

That sort of back-and-forth process is just what Bush has usually tried to avoid as he set about to prosecute an unconventional war against an elusive enemy after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He asserted that in this new era, a president's inherent constitutional authority was all that was needed. Lawmakers and judges largely deferred to him, with occasional exceptions, such as the Supreme Court two years ago when it limited the administration's ability to detain suspects indefinitely.

"There is a strain of legal reasoning in this administration that believes in a time of war the other two branches have a diminished role or no role," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who has resisted the administration's philosophy, said in an interview. "It's sincere, it's heartfelt, but after today, it's wrong."

"Even assuming that Hamden is a dangerous individual who would cause great harm or death to innocent civilians given the opportunity, the Executive nevertheless must comply with the prevailing rule of law in undertaking to try him and subject him to criminal punishment. " - Justice John Paul Stevens writing the majority opinion of the United States Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, et. al.

For months, federal agents relied on an FBI informant posing as an al Qaeda financier to build their terror case against Narseal Batiste and his band of six followers who were allegedly plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and federal buildings in Miami.

But a new figure central to the terror investigation emerged on Thursday: a Chicago man with ties to the suspected terror group, who was arrested in April after a shot was fired inside the group's Liberty City warehouse, according to court documents filed in Atlanta and Miami.

The man, Sultan Khanbey, 51, turned out to be Batiste's mentor and teacher -- and he's now providing prosecutors with an inside view of the alleged terror organization.

Authorities say the group wanted to blow up the tallest building in the United States -- the Sears Tower in Batiste's native Chicago -- along with the FBI headquarters in North Miami Beach and the federal courthouse/detention center/U.S. attorney's office complex in downtown Miami.

The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force first started keeping tabs on the group in October after Batiste tried to recruit a man of Arabic descent, known to regularly travel to the Middle East, to join Batiste's group.

Batiste told the local Arab man that he wanted to meet ''Muslim brothers'' from Yemen to ''wage a holy war'' inside the United States, a prosecutor said Thursday in Atlanta.

Instead of joining Batiste's fledgling Liberty City jihad, the man contacted the FBI.

With the help of the original informant, another Arab man working with the terrorism task force was introduced into Batiste's circle. The new informant, posing as an al Qaeda contact, became a regular fixture at the Liberty City warehouse that they called ``the embassy.''

Federal prosecutor Richard Getchell, speaking at the Atlanta federal court hearing, said Batiste claimed he had built an army of about 100 soldiers in Florida, Chicago and elsewhere and planned on training them on family farmland about two hours north of Baton Rouge, La.

Getchell said Batiste, a former FedEx deliveryman in Chicago, wanted to start his bombing campaign with the Sears Tower because he knew the building and the layout of its below-ground floors.

Khanbey, who was born Charles Stewart, entered the picture in early April, two weeks after most of the seven defendants had sworn a loyalty oath -- or bayat -- to al Qaeda while the hidden cameras were rolling inside the Liberty City warehouse.

In a conversation with the FBI informant on April 1, Batiste described Khanbey as his ''main man,'' identifying him as ``the Sultan.''

The Sultan, Batiste said, was generally aware of their plan, but didn't know the details because Batiste didn't want to talk about them over the phone. The FBI informant and Batiste talked about bringing ''The Sultan'' to Miami.

CALLED TO MIAMI

Batiste later called Khanbey in Chicago on a tapped phone, inviting him to Miami because he ''didn't want to make any moves'' without talking to him.

Khanbey and his wife arrived in Miami on April 11, with travel arrangements set up by his Miami protégé.

Wiretaps inside the warehouse captured Khanbey and Batiste discussing their plans to build a ''Moorish nation of 10,000 people'' and equip them with what they referred to as Moorish national security cards. They talked about recruiting, training and equipping their soldiers in green and black uniforms.

According to court papers, Khanbey said ' . . . they were `vanguards' and 'angels' here to rid the Earth of filth; that they were a nation and would do what nations do; and that as long as they stood on Islam they were impregnable.''

But within days, relations soured in the ranks. Getchell said Thursday that Khanbey openly worried that law enforcement had infiltrated the group. On April 19, the rift between Khanbey and Batiste escalated into gunplay.

Miami police responded to reports of a shot fired inside the ''embassy'' at 6260 NW 15th Ave.

Khanbey was initially charged with aggravated battery for allegedly aiming a pistol and firing one shot past the left ear of Master Ali-

Atheea -- a member of the group who has not been charged in the terror indictment, according to a Miami police report. Police recovered a loaded 9 mm Hi-Point pistol loaded with seven rounds of ammunition.

FIREARMS ARREST

Khanbey was freed on bond, but was rearrested on May 5 by an agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives and charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.

That's when Khanbey, who was convicted in Illinois on rape charges in 1977, started cooperating with the terror investigation.

Khanbey, who faces up to 20 years on the new gun charge, is being held inside one of the buildings that Batiste's paramilitary group was purportedly plotting to destroy, the Federal Detention Center in Miami.

Reached by phone in Chicago, Khanbey's wife, Queen Zakiyaah, said her husband met Batiste in Chicago about five years ago. Like Batiste, Khanbey's family has roots in Louisiana, his wife said.

She said the couple traveled to South Florida in April to help teach Moorish Science principles. Moorish Science was founded in the early 20th Century by the Prophet Noble Drew Ali. The religion blends Christianity, Judaism and Islam and stresses discipline through martial arts.

Lyglenson Lemorin, a permanent U.S. resident from Haiti who was arrested last week in Atlanta, was denied bond Thursday. Lemorin, who said he has known Batiste about 18 months, is awaiting transfer to Miami.

In a post-arrest statement to agents, Lemorin acknowledged swearing the loyalty oath to al Qaeda and participating in martial arts and paramilitary training exercises at the ''embassy'' in Liberty City.

More details are expected to emerge this afternoon at bond hearings in Miami for the other six defendants.

I have known Brother Naz for about 1 1/2 years. I was part of a group called the Moorish Science Temple that took an oath of allegiance to Al Qaida. I was present when John gave Brother Naz a video camera to film target locations (Federal Buildings & Tower building) in Miami Fl and Chicago, IL to destroy. I attended martial arts and military discipline (marching) training at the warehouse (church) in Miami, FL and at public parks in Florida.

• Charge big, convict small
• When is a Muslim extremist ... not quite a Muslim extremist?
• The case of the discount jihadis
• BYOTP (Bring Your Own Terror Plot)
• The global neighborhood war on terror ... with a Kung-Fu grip!
• New info on the Karate Seven
• Crazies making crazies

Tags: war on terror, Bush administration, Liberty City Seven, Liberty City, Karate Seven

Indeed, al-Zarqawi's attacks on Shiite civilians in Iraq have been a point of conflict between his group and bin Laden.

Bin Laden has refrained from attacking Shiites despite the fact that his fundamentalist Sunni strain, called Wahhabi or sometimes called Salafist — like al-Zarqawi's — also considers Shiites as heretics.

"He (bin Laden) may, as an austere Salafist, have no particular love for Shiites or Hezbollah. But I'm not aware that he's ever singled them out for specific criticism," Evans said.

With al-Zarqawi himself gone and despite the vow to carry on his work, Ibrahim Bayram, a Lebanese journalist who follows Hezbollah, said he did not expect the dispute to escalate.

Knight is the English term for a European social position. Knighthood is a non-heritable (with a few rare exceptions) form of gentility, but not of nobility. In the High and Late Middle Ages, the principal duty of a knight was to fight as, and lead, heavy cavalry (see also serjeanty); more recently, knighthood has been a title of honor, given to a more diverse class of people, from Sir Edmund Hillary to Sir Paul McCartney. By extension, "knight" is also used as a translation of the names of other honorable estates connected with horsemanship, especially from classical antiquity.

The history of knighthood involves, therefore, the history of the social institution, which began somewhat differently in the various European regions; the history of the word, and the corresponding terms in French and Latin; and the history of the technology which made heavy cavalry possible. ...

... From the 12th century, the concept continued being tied to cavalry, mounted and armoured soldiers, and thus to the earlier class of noble Roman warriors known as equites (see esquire). Because of the cost of equipping oneself in the cavalry, the term became associated with wealth and social status, and eventually knighthood became a formal title. Significantly the nobility, who at this time were also expected to be leaders in times of war, responded to this new class by becoming members of it. Nobles had their sons trained as gentlemen and as professional fighters in the household of another noble. When the young man had completed his training he was ready to become a knight, and would be honoured as such in a ceremony known as "dubbing" (knighting) from the French "adoubement". It was expected that all young men of noble birth be knights and often take oaths swearing allegiance, chastity, protection of other Christians, and respect of the laws laid down by their forebears, though this varied from period to period and on the rank of the individual.

The Knights Templar were the most powerful military monastic order which took part in the Crusades. The Knights Templar were formed from several groups of knights by Hugh de Payens for the express purpose of protecting Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land. The incorporation of these groups of knights created a powerful military force which formed the nucleus of the Crusading Army. However, these military aspects only formed a portion of their identity. The order adopted a monastic way of life based on that of St. Benedict when not in battle. This dual identity brought about the famous description of them as "fiercer than lions and gentler than lambs." The monastic life of the Knights Templar granted them the peace of mind and soul to fulfill their prescribed mission. The military successes of the Knights Templar were numerous, especially in the Third Crusade where they fought in the ranks at Arsuf under Richard the Lionhearted. The Knights Templar fought fiercely against Saracen encroachment into territory held by the Latin Kingdoms of Palestine, but were driven into Cyprus when Acre fell in 1291. From Cyprus, the Knights Templar achieved financial success which in turn brought them the wrath of King Philip IV of France. The order was persecuted from 1308-1314 and destroyed with the death of the last Grandmaster, Jaques de Molay.

The 19-minute message shows an old still photo of bin Laden in a split-screen next to images of al-Zarqawi taken from a previous video. A voice resembling bin Laden's narrates a tribute to the Jordanian-born militant, who was killed in a June 7 airstrike northeast of Baghdad.

Evan Kohlmann on MSNBC: Tape doesn't indicate that any incidents are on the horizon - OBL is jumping on Zarqawi's coattails and using his legacy - ironic since OBL always had problems and Zarqawi is more useful to OBL dead - the tape is subtitled only in arabic, so the intended audience are those primarily supportive of Al Qaeda in Mideast (tapes intended for the West are subtitled in English and American recruits are used in producing these tapes) - OBL is saying Zarqawi's death is only a bump in the road and a sign of moving towards victory, and Al Qaeda appreciates Zarqawi's role - Zarqawi is the "rock star" and Iraq became the front line since the US arrived there - Americans have nothing to fear from this but it was intentionally put out in time for July 4th, as OBL and Al Qaeda are very media-savvy.

Eleven insurgent groups, eight of which are being led by the 1920 Revolution Brigades, have issued a counter proposal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's plan for national reconciliation. The insurgent groups have offered to quit the battlefield if the following conditions are met:

• The United States agrees to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq in two years.
• An end to U.S. and Iraqi military operations against insurgent forces.
• Compensation for Iraqis killed by U.S. and government forces and reimbursement for property damage.
• An end to the ban on army officers from Saddam's regime in the Iraqi military.
• An end to the government ban on former members of the Baath Party — which ruled the country under Saddam.
• The release of insurgent detainees.

The Associated Press reports the groups largely "operate north of Baghdad in the heavily Sunni Arab provinces of Salahuddin and Diyala." This region is the heart of the operational area of the Baathist/Saddamist insurgency. The 1920 Revolution Brigades is thought to be a mix of Saddam loyalists and military officers, and nationalist Islamists. The 1920 Revolution Brigades is also said to be the armed wing of Islamic Resistance Movement, or Muslim Brotherhood. The Salahudeen Brigades and Mujahideen Army are two other significant elements of the Sunni insurgency (see Evan Kohlmann's chart of the major Sunni insurgent/terrorist groups).
The demands issued by the eleven groups, specifically the end to the bans on Saddam era Army officers and Baathist participation in the government, indicate a significant portion of the Baathist/Saddamist insurgency is searching for a negotiated settlement to end their involvement in the fighting.

One of the demands of this insurgent block is already being met. The Iraqi government has released 450 detainees on June 27th, and over 2,500 total are scheduled to be released "through a series of 200 – 500 person releases throughout the month." While the loyalties of those released has not been made public, the releases are likely being targeted at the eleven insurgent groups as a sign of good faith. At the same time, the Central Criminal Court of Iraq continues to try members of the insurgency for violating the laws of Iraq. The ten latest members of the insurgency have been convicted of non-violent crimes such as "possession of illegal weapons, passport violations and illegal border crossing," and several will be likely eligible for pardon.

IDF troops launched the major arrest operation against Hamas officials overnight, detaining 64 of the ruling militant group's ministers and parliamentarians in the West Bank and 23 military operatives.

The arrests took place in Ramallah, Qalqilyah, Hebron, Jenin and East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian reports. Soldiers carried arrest warrants signed by judges that were issued following cooperative preparatory work by the state prosecution and police.

On Thursday morning, National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer hinted that Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is not exempt from arrest or harm.

"No one is immune... This is not a government. It is a murderous organization," Ben-Eliezer said.

A Hamas official called the arrests an "open war against the Palestinian government and people," and said that Israel must be prepared to pay their consequences.

"We have no government, we have nothing. They have all been taken," Saeb Erekat, an ally of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said of the arrests. "This is absolutely unacceptable and we demand their release immediately."

Israel Radio quoted Shin Bet security chief Yuval Diskin as having told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the day of the kidnapping: "If the soldier is not returned in 24 hours, Israel will not allow the Palestinian government to survive."

Some legal experts accuse the Justice Department overselling the arrests cases as terrorism arrests, generating dramatic headlines that actually end very differently.

"Our approach tends to be, I think, prosecutions by press conferences," says Juliette Kayyem, an NBC terrorism analyst and a professor at Harvard University. "A lot is promised at the front end, and then when you actually get to the facts of the case, it tends to fall apart."

Sensitive to that criticism, the government is now defending its record.

Just last week, the Justice Department said 261 people have been convicted in terror-related prosecutions since 2001. Many were solid wins — Iyman Faris, who plotted to attack the Brooklyn Bridge, for example. Would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid, and Mohammed Babar, who admitted providing support for al-Qaida operations overseas.

But of the total 261 convictions, the average sentence is only around a year, from plea agreements, to charges like immigration or document fraud. And sometimes the threat may seem remote, as with the Lackawanna Six, the group in Buffalo, N.Y., convicted of getting terror training but never charged with planning any specific attack.

Even so, in a recent speech, the deputy attorney general said all are examples of a new approach — prevention through prosecution.

"We could await further action by these men and then arrest and prosecute them," says Paul McNulty, U.S. deputy attorney general, "or we could prosecute at the moment our investigation reveals both a risk to our national security and a violation of our nation's laws,"

The alarming news flashed across America’s TV screens on Thursday evening: government agents had thwarted an al-Qa’ida plot, using home-grown American terrorists, to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago in a ghastly repeat of 9/11.

When the dust had settled barely 24 hours later, a rather more modest version of events had emerged. The seven young black men arrested at a warehouse in Miami and Atlanta had never been in touch with al-Qa’ida , and had no explosives. Their “plan” to destroy America’s tallest building was little more than wishful thinking, expressed by one of them to an FBI informant purporting to be a member of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organisation.

Even the FBI admitted as much. John Pistole, the bureau’s deputy director, described the plan on Friday as “aspirational rather than operational” and admitted that none of the seven (five US citizens and two Haitian immigrants, pictured) had ever featured on a terrorist watch list.

In essence, the entire case rests upon conversations between Narseal Baptiste, the apparent ringleader of the group, with the informant, who was posing as a member of al-Qa’ida but in fact belonged to the South Florida Terrorist Task Force.

At a meeting “on or about 16 December” according to the indictment made public as the men made their first court appearance in Miami, Mr Baptiste asked his contact to supply equipment including uniforms, machine guns, explosives, cars and $50,000 in cash for an “Islamic Army” that would carry out a mission “just as good or greater than 9/11”.

In fact, the conspiracy seems to have extended little further than those words. By last month, it had all but fizzled out, amid squabbling among Mr Baptiste’s followers. Even their religious leanings are in dispute. Neighbours say they were part of a group, called Seas of David, that mixes Christian and Islamic elements.

That did not deter the US Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, from summoning a press conference in which he denounced an attempt to “wage war against America”. But the threat, even he admitted, was not immediate – and those who posed it were in fact merely a few semi-unemployed men, most of them petty criminals, from Liberty City, a poor black neighbourhood close to the centre of Miami.

If the case has any significance in America’s “war on terror”, it is not as a present danger, but as a harbinger of possible future risks. Despite countless scare stories in the media, colour-coded alerts from the Department of Homeland Security and grim official warnings of al-Qa’ida sleeper cells in the country waiting to do their worst, the US has not suffered a single terrorist attack since 9/11.

Nor have the authorities unearthed much of a terror threat. The Justice Department claims that 401 people have been charged with “terrorism-related offences” since the 2001 attacks, and that 212 have been convicted. In fact only a tiny number of these were true terrorists.

The tendency – duly followed last week by Mr Gonzales – has been to hype. The precedent was famously set by his predecessor, John Ashcroft, who called a press conference during a visit to Moscow in 2002 to announce the arrest of Jose Padilla, the so-called “dirty bomber” said to be preparing an attack on Washington with a radioactive device.

Mr Padilla languished incommunicado in a navy brig without charge for over three years. He has been transferred to a civilian prison, and faces trial in Miami later this year on different, much vaguer, terrorist charges. An alleged sleeper cell was unearthed in Detroit, but those convictions were quashed in 2004 when it emerged that prosecutors had manipulated evidence. In December 2005, the trial of Sami al-Arian, accused of links with Islamic Jihad terrorists, ended in embarrassment for the government when the Florida university professor was acquitted.

The biggest successes have had little to do with US law enforcement. Richard Reid, who tried to blow up an American Airlines plane with a shoe bomb in December 2001, was stopped by alert flight attendants, while Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, the Virginia student serving a 30-year sentence for threatening to kill President George Bush, was caught by police in Saudi Arabia.

• When is a Muslim extremist ... not quite a Muslim extremist?
• The case of the discount jihadis
• BYOTP (Bring Your Own Terror Plot)
• The global neighborhood war on terror ... with a Kung-Fu grip!
• New info on the Karate Seven
• Crazies making crazies

Tags: war on terror, Bush administration, Liberty City Seven, Liberty City, Karate Seven

KILMEADE: But Senator, just one question for you. Just real quick, one last question for you: Why do you think the president would keep troops there past when they should be?

LEVIN: I don’t know. Because General Casey has said that he expects these significant reductions this year. Why the White House would then attack Democrats for proposing the same thing has no explanation that I can think of — no other explanation.

KILMEADE: General Casey said he’s going to do it by conditions on the ground, and has not said he is going to withdraw troops.

(CROSSTALK)

LEVIN: Let me read it to you. Let me just read you what Casey said…

(CROSSTALK)

KILMEADE: He said one of the plans that he brought together would be reducing troops by 7,000 in September. That’s one of the plans.

LEVIN: Let me read to you what Casey said. “I’m confident that we will be able to take reductions over the course of this year.” This is what he said publicly at the Pentagon. I don’t know whether you reported this or not.

KILMEADE: We covered it live.

LEVIN: Good. Live — and I hope you cover it with this program. “Is that still true, General, fairly substantial?” General Casey: “I think so.” Now are the Republicans going to call General Casey “Cut-and-Run George” because he says that he believes there will be substantial reductions this year? They attacked Democrats — from the White House. It was a rubber stamp Republican Senate. They attack Democrats…

KILMEADE: We’re up against a hard break, but that was a 45-minute press conference with the secretary of defense. And he went back and forth over many scenarios, and that was one of them. And, of course, the best-case scenario — which you accuse the president of taking too far, too often — was that he be able to reduce troops. And I’m sure he wants them out as much as you do. Senator Levin, thanks so much for joining us.

LEVIN: Well, thank you for your opinion. But I was hoping this would be an interview of me rather than an interview of you.

KILMEADE: Well, you know what, I did interview you. I listened to you talk. I watched you read. Senator Levin, thank you very much.

Most Americans say Congress should pass a resolution that includes a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll taken last weekend.

Exactly half of those surveyed want all U.S. forces out within 12 months.

Some 57% say Congress should pass a resolution that outlines a plan for withdrawing U.S. troops, while 39% say that should be left to the president and his advisers.

The percentage of Americans who say the president has "a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq" has dropped to 31%. This is a new low, but it's still higher than the 25% who say congressional Democrats have a clear plan.

Americans are paying unusually close attention to the congressional elections in November, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, and they are more inclined to deliver big gains to Democrats than in any year since Republicans swept to control of the House and Senate in 1994.

The survey, taken Friday through Sunday, indicates that voters are more concerned about national issues than local ones — a situation that favors Democrats hoping to tap discontent over the Iraq war and gas prices — and prefer Democrats over Republicans on handling every major issue except terrorism.

President Bush looms as a significant drag: 39% of those surveyed say they are less likely to vote for a candidate who supports Bush. Just 21% say they would be more likely.

"At this point, it certainly looks like a significant tilt to the Democrats, but it's still quite early," says James Campbell, a political scientist at the University of Buffalo and author of The Presidential Pulse of Congressional Elections.

• The case of the discount jihadis
• BYOTP (Bring Your Own Terror Plot)
• The global neighborhood war on terror ... with a Kung-Fu grip!
• New info on the Karate Seven
• Crazies making crazies

Tags: Terrorism, War on terror, Bush administration, Politics

West Palm Beach, Florida (AP) — Rush Limbaugh was detained for about three-and-a-half hours today at Palm Beach International Airport after authorities said they found a bottle of Viagra in his possession without a prescription.

According to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, the 55-year-old radio commentator's luggage was examined by U.S. Customs and Border Protection after his private plane landed at the airport around 2 p.m. from the Dominican Republic.

Customs officials reportedly found in Limbaugh's luggage a prescription bottle labeled as Viagra, a prescription drug that treats erectile disfunction.

The sheriff's office says the problem is, Limbaugh's name was not on the bottle. Two Florida doctors' names were.

Sheriff's investigators confiscated the drugs, and Limbaugh was released around 5:30 p.m. without being charged.

Limbaugh's attorney says a doctor wrote the prescription in his name for “privacy purposes.”

Were members of this cell were connected to any mosques or Islamic Centers? Are they home grown terrorists? Imports? Have they been to prison? Do they have connections to any Canadian cells? Questions, questions…

• BYOTP (Bring Your Own Terror Plot)
• The global neighborhood war on terror ... with a Kung-Fu grip!
• New info on the Karate Seven
• Crazies making crazies

Tags: Terrorism, War on terror, Bush administration, Politics

The seven men -- Narseal Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Stanley Phanor, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin, Lyglenson Lemorin, and Rotschild Augustine -- have been charged with conspiring to support al Qaeda. But the closest the group got to Osama bin Laden was an FBI informant posing as an ``al Qaeda representative.''

The indictment documents several meetings between Batiste, the group's 32-year-old suspected ringleader, and the informant. The men discuss potential terrorism targets, including FBI offices in five cities, and list needed supplies, including machine guns, bulletproof vests and combat boots, the indictment said.

Perhaps just as damaging is that all seven men swore an oath of loyalty to al Qaeda, the indictment says.

But the indictment also suggests that the men were nowhere near executing their plans.

The defendants had no guns or other weapons when they were arrested last week. The informant did provide some boots and a camera for the suspects to photograph a North Miami Beach FBI office and other local targets, the indictment says.

But it's unclear from the indictment whether the alleged conspirators actually visited their most ambitious target, the 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago.

These factors have led some to question whether the government went too far in its prosecution and has entrapped the men by manufacturing the crime for them.

''I don't think anyone seriously believes that these were real terrorists. We used to have agents and confidential informants creating drug deals in Liberty City. Now it looks like they are creating homegrown cells,'' said David O. Markus, president of the Miami chapter of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

• The neighborhood war on terror ... with a Kung-Fu grip!
• New info on the Karate Seven
• Crazies making crazies
• Yeah, right

Tags: Terrorism, War on terror, Bush administration, Politics

"This group was more aspirational than operational," FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said. -- From an AP story on the arrest of seven men in Miami on terrorism charges, June 23

• New info on the Karate Seven
• Crazies making crazies
• Yeah, right

Tags: Terrorism, War on terror, Bush administration, Politics

The seven individuals indicted by a federal grand jury were taken into custody Thursday when authorities swarmed a Miami warehouse that had been used by a Black Muslim group.

According to the court documents, a man identified as Narseal Batiste was the recruiter who wanted to organize "soldiers" to build an Islamic army to wage holy war.

The others were identified as Patrick Abraham, Stanley Grant Phanor, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin, Lyglenson Lemorin, and Rotschild Augustine.

Batiste allegedly met last December in a hotel room with someone posing as a representative of al-Qaida — someone law enforcement offic