Liesje
Blue Crack Addict
NBC News and news services
Updated: 18 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Calling them "homegrown terrorists," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Friday that seven men had been charged with conspiring to work with al-Qaida to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower and five federal buildings.
“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.
The suspects, ranging in age from 22 to 32, are five U.S. citizens, a legal immigrant from Haiti and a Haitian national who was in this country illegally.
Gonzales cited court documents that said the ringleader boasted of wanting to "kill all the devils we can" in a mission "just as good or greater than 9/11."
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.
Gonzales said that “the convergence of globalization and technology has created a new brand of terrorism. Today terrorist threats come from smaller more loosely defined cells not affiliated with al-Qaida but who are inspired by a violent jihadist message, and left unchecked these homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like al-Qaida.”
Batiste allegedly met last December in a hotel room with someone posing as a representative of al-Qaida — someone law enforcement officials say was actually an agent of a country friendly to the United States.
The indictment said Batiste initially asked for "boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios, and vehicles," as well as $50,000 in cash, to help him build an "Islamic Army to wage jihad.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13497335/
Scary stuff.