WASHINGTON, 24 June 2006 — FBI agents raided a warehouse in Miami on Thursday and later arrested seven suspects who were allegedly plotting to blow up the tallest building in the US, the Sears Tower in Chicago, as well as the FBI headquarters in Miami. Officials said they found no explosives or weapons when they raided the warehouse where the suspects had been living.
The suspects are believed to be Muslim. Five of those arrested are US residents, one is a resident alien and one is an illegal alien; they are young, in their teens and early 20s.
In a prepared statement, the US Attorney’s Office in Miami said the arrests were made “as part of an ongoing investigation into a terrorist-related matter,” and that “the individuals arrested posed no immediate threat to our community.”
“We disrupted the terror plot before any harm could be done,” said John Pistole, deputy director of the FBI, during a briefing yesterday at the US Justice Department. “Their goal was simple – commit attacks against America. These seven individuals are members of a home-grown terrorist cell, they lived and worked in the US,” said Pistole, adding: “The suspects wanted the attack ‘to be just as good or greater’ than 9/11.”
The young men caught in a sting operation thought they were meeting an Al-Qaeda member — who was really an undercover law-enforcement agent — allegedly asking him for weapons and financial support.
A senior law official told reporters the suspects, who live in a poor section of Miami, had “aspirations” to carry out the terror plot, but “no means” to do so.
The men are not believed to have any actual ties to the terror group and a senior federal source told CNN they were likely “Al-Qaeda wannabes.”
The question remains as to how serious the men were, and if they were really capable of carrying out such a plot.Even if the men did not have the means or were not in the final stages of plotting to carry out the bombing, a security expert told CNN that the act of conspiring to do so is a federal crime. According to a federal indictment, the men were conspiring to “levy war against the United States”.
The indictment names Narseal Batiste, the alleged ringleader of the group, as asking an undercover agent he thought was from Al-Qaeda for help to build an “Islamic Army to wage jihad”, the indictment said.
He is said to have told the agent he and his five “soldiers” wanted Al-Qaeda training and planning for a “full ground war” against the US in order to “kill all the devils we can”.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told reporters that each member faces a possible 20 years in prison for each of the charges brought against them.
A neighbor told reporters that the warehouse group had formed about a year ago and called itself the “Seas of David”.
The group’s 40 to 50 members considered themselves “soldiers of God” and were against the war in Iraq, while adopting disciplines such as daily exercise, no drinking, drugs or meat.
A man calling himself Brother Corey and claiming to be a member of the group told CNN that it was peaceful and devoted to Bible study, not a terrorist organization. Benjamin Williams, another neighbor, told the Miami Herald that the men in the warehouse had described it as a karate school.
MSNBC reported another person said they provided some security to the area, which has a history of violence and drugs, and offered a positive alternative to the young men.
“They used to be out around 11 at night, practicing like they were in the military or something ... push-ups, jumping jacks and jumping over chairs,” he said.
“They would be gone all day and come back at night to the warehouse to sleep. They sold shampoo and hair grease on the street,” another neighbor said.
Several terrorism investigations have had south Florida links. Several of the Sept. 11 hijackers lived and trained in the area, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, and several plots by Cuban-Americans against Fidel Castro’s government have been based in Miami.
