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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 6:36 pm Post subject: CounterTerrorism Raids in Miami Today... |
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MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Seven people are in custody after a sweep by law enforcement authorities in connection with an alleged plot against targets that may have included the Sears Tower, officials told CNN on Thursday.
Officials said no weapons or bomb-making materials had been found in the searches in the Miami area by FBI and state and local law enforcement officials. The city is under no imminent threat, according to the FBI.
Law enforcement sources told CNN that the arrests disrupted what may have been the early stages of a domestic terrorist plot to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois, the FBI building in Miami, and possibly other targets. (Watch details of the raids -- 2:53)
The 110-story Sears Tower is the world's third-tallest building and the tallest in North America.
Barbara Carley, managing director of the Sears Tower, said in a statement that "it would be inappropriate for us to confirm or deny details of news reports about federal law enforcement action before an official statement from the Justice Department.
"However, Sears Tower security officials regularly speak with the FBI and local law enforcement authorities who track and investigate terrorism threats. Today was no exception," she said. "Despite new information, law enforcement continues to tell us that they have never found evidence of a credible terrorism threat against Sears Tower that has gone beyond criminal discussions."
Law enforcement sources told CNN that some of the suspects are members of a radical African-American Muslim group and that at least one had taken "an al Qaeda oath." They had carried out surveillance on the Sears Tower and FBI building in Miami, the sources said.
Sources told CNN that the arrests culminated a monthslong undercover operation. The suspects believed they were dealing with an al Qaeda operative, but the person was actually a government informant, the sources said.
Documents related to the investigation have been sealed.
One of the arrests was made before Thursday, officials said.
A spokeswoman for Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez said the mayor was notified of the raid earlier in the day, and a spokesman for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said the governor had been notified Thursday morning.
Both Alvarez and Bush said they had no plans to tighten security.
"If anything, this is a plot foiled," Alvarez spokeswoman Vicki Mallette said.
Plans for a massive rally Friday in the city for the Miami Heat, the new National Basketball Association champions, are unchanged, she said, adding that 200,000 people were expected to attend.
The FBI said one search warrant was executed in a warehouse near a housing project in Liberty City, a predominantly black and low-income area of Miami.
Cedric Thomas, a co-owner of Thomas Produce Market, told the Miami Herald that the area around his store was teeming with federal agents.
''There is a ton of guys in uniforms moving around, blocking the streets. I'm not sure what they are doing,'' Thomas told the newspaper.
Residents living near the warehouse told The Associated Press that the men taken into custody called themselves Muslims and had tried to recruit young people.
The men slept in the warehouse, Tashawn Rose, 29, told the AP.
"They would come out late at night and exercise," she said. "It seemed like a military boot camp that they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard."
The residents told the AP that FBI agents spent several hours seeking information from people in the neighborhood. They said the suspects, who appeared to be in their teens or 20s, had lived in the area for about a year, the AP reported.
"We are conducting a number of arrests and searches, and we'll have more about that when the operation is completed, probably tomorrow morning," FBI Director Robert Mueller told CNN's Larry King in an interview broadcast Thursday night.
"Because it's an ongoing operation, we really can't get into details," Mueller said. "But whenever we undertake an operation like this, we would not do it without the approval of a judge. We've got search warrants and arrest warrants and the like. ...."
In a statement, the U.S. attorney's office in Miami said federal, state and local agencies made the arrests in connection with a domestic "terrorist-related matter."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will hold a news conference Friday regarding the raids. |
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/22/miami.raids/index.html |
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Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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| Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 6:49 pm Post subject: |
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| As with the Marines in Haditha, innocent until proven til guilty. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 10:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Octavius Hite wrote: |
| As with the Marines in Haditha, innocent until proven til guilty. |
Indeed. This is how it should be and this is, in fact, how it is.
Still, your politics are impossible to miss -- that is, I doubt that "inncocent until proven guilty" summarizes how you approached the story on Haditha. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2006 9:10 pm Post subject: |
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Agents in Miami have arrested seven men who are indicted on terrorism charges. The seven are accused of conspiring to provide support to al-Qaida and planning to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago, along with some government buildings in Miami.
The men apparently were never in actual communication with al-Qaida; they were dealing with an undercover agent pretending to represent the terrorist group.
The government is describing the threat as "aspirational rather than operational." The Justice Department says that Miami and Chicago face no immediate threat.
While two of the suspects are Haitians, five are U.S.-born, prompting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to call the threat "home-grown." He added that the Justice Department is trying to control such groups before they become more serious threats. |
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5507130
Indictment...
http://www.npr.org/documents/2006/jun/miami_indictment.pdf |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2006 10:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Law enforcement sources told CNN that some of the suspects are members of a radical African-American Muslim group and that at least one had taken "an al Qaeda oath." |
Is Al Qaeda in the habit of recruiting some members of a terrorist group but not others?
And anyway, if what I read on Juan Cole's blog is correct, these don't seem like the kind of guys that any self-respecting Muslim fundamentalist would have anything to do with...
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I just saw the spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations on CNN saying that the Miami cult members just arrested are not Muslims. I'd say that is a fair statement.
For one thing, they are vegetarians!
It seems pretty obvious that they are just a local African-American cult which mixed Judaism, Christianity and (a little bit of) Islam. It seems to be a of vague offshoot of the Moors group founded by Dwight York. I heard on CNN that one of them talked of being Moors. And Batiste, the leader, called whites "devils" in the tradition of the original Nation of Islam and York's Moors. Now CNN is saying one member said they practiced witchcraft [likely meaning Haitian voodoo or perhaps Santeria-like rituals]. One former member is called Levi-El, suggesting he might be associated with the Black Hebrew movement or an offshoot. 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. I wonder if it is "Seas of David" or "C's of David", with "c" meaning commando or some such?
I define cult as a religious group that has values that put it in a high state of tension with the norms of mainstream society, and that has a leadership that imposes high levels of discipline and demand for control of adherents' lives.
This Seas of David group primarily seems to have been studying the Bible. The mother of one insisted that he is a Catholic. Then there is all that Jewish symbology and terminology, even in their names. Islam was nothing more for them but a set of symbols they could pull into their syncretic local culture. The group drew on poor Haitian immigrants and local indigent African-American youth. If this were the 1960s, they'd have been Black Panthers or Communists.
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http://www.juancole.com/ |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 2:17 am Post subject: |
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From the Canadian CTV network...
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Seven men arrested in connection with an alleged homegrown terror plot have been charged with conspiring to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower and other U.S. buildings.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the men were part of a group of "homegrown terrorists" who aspired to work with al Qaeda -- but ended up consorting instead with a law enforcement informant.
"They were persons who, for whatever reason, came to view their home country as the enemy," Gonzales said at a news conference at the Justice Department Friday morning.
"The individual they thought was a member of al Qaeda was present at their meetings and in actuality he was working with the South Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force."
The seven men -- ranging in age from 22 to 32 -- were indicted by a federal grand jury. They were taken into custody Thursday when authorities stormed a warehouse in the poverty-stricken Liberty City area.
According to the indictment handed up Tuesday, the group allegedly planned to blow up a federal building in Miami in conjunction with the al Qaeda terrorist network. The men are charged with conspiring to "maliciously damage and destroy by means of an explosive'' the 110-floor Sears Tower and Miami's FBI office.
They are also charged with conspiring "to levy war against the government of the United States, and to oppose by force the authority thereof.''
Five of the accused appeared in federal court this afternoon in Miami, but no pleas were entered. U.S. Magistrate Judge Patrick White set another hearing for next Friday, after prosecutors recommended the men remain in custody until trial, The Associated Press reports.
White appointed the defendants lawyers after they stated they were unable to afford their own.
Another of the accused is expected to appear in court in Atlantic, but it's unknown when the seventh suspect will make his initial appearance.
The allegations
One person named in the indictment is Narseal Batiste.
Batiste is accused of meeting several times in December 2005 with someone purported to be an al Qaeda member to ask for supplies such as boots, uniforms and $50,000 US to help him build an "Islamic Army" to wage "jihad."
Four months later, Batiste is accused of telling an undercover informant of Arabic descent who he thought was an al Qaeda operative that he and his army planned to "kill all the devils we can."
The mission was intended to be "as good or greater than 9/11," according to the court documents, starting with the destruction of the Sears Tower.
Batiste and a co-defendant provided the informant with photographs of the FBI building in North Miami Beach, as well as video footage of other Miami government buildings, and discussed a plot to bomb the FBI building, the indictment said.
No explosives were found in Miami, but the suspects were reportedly trying to buy weapons.
Five of the seven men are Americans, one is an illegal immigrant from Haiti whose visa expired and one is a Haitian national who is in the U.S. illegally.
Federal prosecutors said the men took an oath to al Qaeda and plotted to create an "Islamic Army'' bent on violence against the United States.
"Today terrorist threats come from smaller more loosely defined cells not affiliated with al Qaeda but who are inspired by a violent jihadist message," said Gonzalez,
"And left unchecked these homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like al Qaeda.''
Residents living near the warehouse said the suspects were Muslims who said they had dedicated their lives to Allah and tried to recruit young people to join their group.
"They would come out late at night and exercise. It seemed like a military boot camp that they were working on there," Tashawn Rose told AP. "They would come out and stand guard."
The warehouse is located in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Miami, said Jeffrey Kofman, a correspondent for ABC News in Miami.
"Most of the people here live on food stamps. The biggest public housing project in Miami is here," Kofman told CTV's Canada AM.
"It's quite a rough area that's seen a pretty violent history over the years, some serious riots in the past."
A man who called himself Brother Corey told CNN late Thursday that five of the men were his "brothers" and they belonged to a group called the "Seas of David."
He described the "Seas of David" as a religious group that blends the teachings of Christianity and Islam.
Other relatives described the defendants as deeply religious people who studied the Bible and took classes in Islam.
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Last edited by On the other hand on Sat Jun 24, 2006 2:24 am; edited 2 times in total |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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