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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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More on the link below.
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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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 9:37 am Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
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... |
This does have "amateur hour" written all over it. But, as in the Canadian case, I would not be so quick to downplay the threat they posed.
Had they had the resources, they probably would have executed their plans.
Here is an excerpt from the discussion on PBS's NewsHour...
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RAY SUAREZ: The men indicted in Miami today were described by federal authorities as homegrown terrorists, as members of an Islamic army planning to destroy five government buildings in four U.S. cities, and the Sears Tower in Chicago, as well.
ALBERTO GONZALES, U.S. Attorney General: What we have is a situation where individuals here in America made plans to hurt Americans.
They did take some overt acts; they did request materials; they did request equipment; they did request funding; they took an allegiance -- swore allegiance to al-Qaida.
We clearly believe there's sufficient information, sufficient facts, to support this prosecution. And, therefore, we took action when we did because we believe we have an obligation to prevent America from another attack here.
RAY SUAREZ: The seven indicted include five U.S. citizens and two Haitian immigrants, one here illegally, and range in age from 22 to 32.
ALBERTO GONZALES: The indictment charges four counts: conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, namely al-Qaida; conspiracy to provide material support and resources to terrorists; conspiracy to maliciously damage and destroy buildings by means of an explosive device; and conspiracy to levy war against the government of the United States.
Seven arrested Thursday
RAY SUAREZ: All seven were taken into custody yesterday, when authorities swarmed a warehouse in Miami's Liberty City neighborhood, a predominantly poor, African-American section north of downtown.
LIBERTY CITY RESIDENT: They used a blowtorch. And that wouldn't work, and then they cut the door open. Then they gained entry then, when they gained entry -- I didn't know anyone was in there.
RAY SUAREZ: Liberty City residents said the men regularly were seen outside the warehouse but that they kept to themselves.
LIBERTY CITY RESIDENT: All you could do was just see their eyes. They had the whole head wrapped up with, just their eyes showing. And, like, they standing guard, one here, one there, like soldiers, you know? Very quiet.
LIBERTY CITY RESIDENT: They talked to nobody. They would nod their head, they say. Some of the people said they speak to them, and they just nod their head or something, or they just keep their heads straight. They was acting like they was in military training.
RAY SUAREZ: According to the federal indictment, the seven men sought assistance from someone they believed was a member of al-Qaida.
ALBERTO GONZALES: In actuality, he was working with the South Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force.
RAY SUAREZ: The government says the alleged ringleader of the group, Narseal Batiste, asked that informant during several meetings last year to provide him with boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios, vehicles, and $50,000 in cash to help him wage war against the United States, including an explosives attack on America's tallest building, the Sears Tower in Chicago.
Authorities there sought to reassure the public today.
CHICAGO SPOKESMAN: There never was any credible threat to the Sears Tower at all.
RAY SUAREZ: But some Chicagoans still voiced concern.
CHICAGO RESIDENT: I'm scared, because I work kitty-corner from the Sears Tower, and I was working -- on September 11th, I was just leaving work when that all happened, and I started feeling like things were OK. Now, I'm scared again.
RAY SUAREZ: Throughout the day, federal authorities were peppered with questions about how the operation was executed and why they decided to act when they did.
ALBERTO GONZALES: Our philosophy here is that we try to identify plots in the earliest stages possible because we don't know what we don't know about a terrorism plot, and that, once we have sufficient information to move forward with a prosecution, that's what we do. And that is what has occurred here.
RAY SUAREZ: In Miami, U.S. attorney Alex Acosta elaborated on the procedures.
ALEX ACOSTA, U.S. Attorney for Southern Florida: Certainly, one question is: Do we have sufficient evidence to bring an indictment and to then obtain a conviction in court?
Another question is: Have we carefully investigated the cell to ensure that we have identified all individuals who may pose a threat to our community or to our nation?
And sometimes that's a very difficult balance, because you want to go and disrupt cells like this before they acquire the capability to execute on a plan... |
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terrorism/jan-june06/sears_06-23.html |
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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 8:51 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for the NewsHour link, Gopher. That was interesting.
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I would not be so quick to downplay the threat they posed.
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No, I certainly wouldn't rule out these guys being capabale of doing serious material harm.
I guess I'm just a little bit skeptical of the spin that's being put on it that these guys "took an Al Qaeda oath". As far as I can tell, they never came anywhere near to having contact with Al Qaeda.
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RAY SUAREZ: According to the federal indictment, the seven men sought assistance from someone they believed was a member of al-Qaida.
ALBERTO GONZALES: In actuality, he was working with the South Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force.
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RAY SUAREZ: The government says the alleged ringleader of the group, Narseal Batiste, asked that informant during several meetings last year to provide him with boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios, vehicles, and $50,000 in cash to help him wage war against the United States, including an explosives attack on America's tallest building, the Sears Tower in Chicago.
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What I'm wondering is: were the suspects actively seeking out Al Qaeda membership, or did the undercover agent just say "hey if you want me to give you all that cool stuff we talked about, you're gonna have to swear an oath to Al Qaeda", so as to be able to turn around and claim that he had busted up an organization that had sworn allegiance to Al Qaeda. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 9:32 am Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
| I guess I'm just a little bit skeptical of the spin that's being put on it that these guys "took an Al Qaeda oath..." |
I share your skepticism.
We need to depoliticize and de-hyperbolize (is that a verb?) political discourse.
Authorities found and arrested a small and apparently isolated group of wannabe terrorists, thus nipping the rose in the bud in the very earliest of stages.
Whether these amateurs could have blossomed into anything at all is in doubt, however, even if their extremist worldviews and their desire to harm the United States (and, dare I say, nebulously, whites) are not.
It seems that they sympathized with al Qaeda but had no relations with anyone in Afghanistan or Iraq.
It is hard to say whether the undercover officer(s) in contact with them led them. But this group does not strike me as a group that has a problem articulating its admitely crude worldviews and specific plans.
Perhaps the govt wants to link this to al Qaeda for political motives. Perhaps the spin is intended, apolitically, to scare anyone in the U.S. who may be thinking along similar lines: perhaps it is the old Scooby-Doo thesis: "you will never get away with it because we will always discover your crime and arrest you," even in the big leagues of al Qaeda and company... |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 2:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Perhaps the govt wants to link this to al Qaeda for political motives. Perhaps the spin is intended, apolitically, to scare anyone in the U.S. who may be thinking along similar lines: perhaps it is the old Scooby-Doo thesis: "you will never get away with it because we will always discover your crime and arrest you," even in the big leagues of al Qaeda and company... |
I agree. (in a way).
I don't think the aim is to say, "we will always discover you.". NO, it is spun so that every American will think that there is a terrorist under their bed. Same thing the Nazis did (in kind, not degree), with villanizing every Jew and making others think that even their best friend could be "jewish".
Rule by FEAR.
DD |
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WorldWide
Joined: 28 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 4:03 pm Post subject: |
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POLITICS... the same day as the arrests there was news of a new financial spying controversy. It got covered up by the so called terror arrests of a bunch of wannabee militia CHRISTIAN black men. 
By the way, the "Seas of David" group all sported Stars of David on their arms as a group logo. Funny how that piece of info never made it onto CNN. It might have made jews look bad....God forbid! |
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