Seven charged for plotting US attacks [video report]

MIAMI - Seven men were charged in the United States overnight with discussing attacks on the landmark Sears Tower in Chicago and the FBI building in Miami in a mission they hoped would be "just as good or greater" than September 11, US officials said.

But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told a news conference in Washington that the plotting of the "home-grown terrorism cell" never went beyond the earliest planning stages.

"There was no immediate threat," Gonzales said, acknowledging the defendants never had any actual contact with al Qaeda and did not get their hands on weapons or explosives.

Deputy FBI Director John Pistole said at the Justice Department news conference that the discussions to attack the 110-story Sears Tower -- the tallest building in the United States -- were "aspirational rather than operational".

A south Florida grand jury indicted the men on Thursday. The indictment said the men pledged loyalty to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda in order to seek support from it for their desire to "wage war" against the US government and build an Islamic army.

They wanted to "kill all the devils we can", it said.

But a person they thought was an al Qaeda representative was actually an FBI informant, justice officials said.

The operation was high-profile, but officials denied there was any political motivation ahead of mid-term congressional elections in November, and amid a deep slump in President George W. Bush's popularity and in public support for the Iraq war. Critics of the government frequently accuse it of exploiting fear of a repeat of the September 11 attack.

"These are precisely the types of groups that we should be dismantling and disrupting and we are going to continue to aggressively pursue any cell that expresses an intent to commit terrorist acts against the United States," said R. Alexander Acosta, US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

Five of the men, named as Narseal Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Stanley Grant Phanor, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin, Lyglenson Lemorin and Rotschild Augustine, appeared briefly in a Miami magistrate's court on Friday local time.

Shackled

Shackled and dressed in khaki prison garb with plastic sandals, they were granted court-appointed attorneys. It was unclear where the other two defendants were but media reports said one might be in Atlanta.

Justice Department officials said five were Americans and two were from Haiti, and that one of the Haitians was in the country illegally. They said the group had a "separatist" ideology, but they did not elaborate.

The men were arrested on Thursday after heavily armed FBI agents and police raided a warehouse in one of Miami's poorest neighborhoods, Liberty City, a predominantly black area that has witnessed some of Miami's worst race riots.

A man who called himself Brother Corey and who said he was a member of the "Seas of David" religious group that some of the defendants belonged to told CNN they were not terrorists.

Miami media said the group sold hair grease and shampoo in the streets. Some worked on construction crews.

The man the FBI said was the ringleader, Batiste, told the FBI informant he believed to be an al Qaeda representative that he wanted to attend a training camp with some of his "soldiers" and wage a "full ground war" against the United States, the indictment said.

"On or about December 16, 2005, Narseal Batiste provided the 'al Qaeda representative' (actually the FBI informant) with a list of materials and equipment needed in order to wage jihad, which list included boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios and vehicles," the indictment also said.

Their aim was to "'kill all the devils we can' in a mission that would 'be just as good or greater than 9/11,' beginning with the destruction of the Sears Tower," it said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said, however, the arrested men did not belong to the Islamic community in Liberty City.

The arrests did not persuade the authorities to cancel a parade on Friday through Miami to celebrate the victory by the Miami Heat team in the National Basketball Association championship, expected to attract about 200,000 people.

- REUTERS