UNITED STATES:A US federal court jury has acquitted one member of a group accused of plotting to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower and declared themselves deadlocked in deciding the fate of the six other defendants in the case of the so-called "Liberty City Seven".
Thursday's hung jury came in a prosecution that has divided legal experts over how far the government should go in building a case against terrorism suspects.
Paid government informants who provided evidence for prosecutors had proposed acts of violence to suspects under surveillance, leading critics to question whether the case was entrapment rather than what officials called a pre-emptive strike against a genuine terrorism plot.
The entire case was "a script, written, produced and directed by the government", Ana Jhones, attorney for alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste, argued before the court in her closing statement two weeks ago.
Mr Batiste, the 33-year-old local spiritual leader of an obscure religious sect known as the Moorish Science Temple, testified during the trial that he agreed to draft terrorism plots with an FBI undercover informant he thought was from al-Qaeda, only because he hoped to receive $50,000 from the man. The money, Batiste said, was to be used to sustain his religious chapter and start a construction business.
Mr Batiste also told the jurors that the other six defendants - with whom he worked odd jobs and studied an array of religions, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam - knew little if anything about his discussions with Elie Assad, the key FBI informant.
Mr Assad pretended to be an emissary of Osama bin Laden, whom he called Brother Muhammad.
Prosecutors conceded from the beginning that the defendants' group was more "aspirational than operational", but warned that they were a home-grown terror cell conspiring to commit violent acts against Americans.
The federal government charged that the group discussed attacking Sears Tower and "cased" federal buildings in the Miami area, including FBI headquarters, with an eye towards additional acts of violence.
All seven defendants remain in custody, as they have been for the past 18 months.
- (LA Times-Washington Post service)