Vol. 72/No. 9      March 3, 2008

The men, known as the Liberty City Seven, are accused of conspiring to blow up the Chicago Sears Tower and bomb Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters in several cities. The charges are based on the testimony of FBI agents who posed as representatives of al-Qaeda.

The seven are members of a religious group, Seas of David, that held meetings in Liberty City, a large Black community in Miami.

One of the seven, Lyglenson Lemorin, was found innocent of all charges in the previous trial. After the trial, the government rearrested him, locked him up in prison, and leveled the very same charges against him in an Atlanta immigration court. The government is trying to deport him to Haiti even though he has no prior criminal record and is a legal U.S. resident.

“I feel I’m being treated unjustly,” Lemorin said in an interview after a gag order against him and his attorney was finally lifted. “I was not involved in the claim they made against me. I am no threat to the United States of America.”

His attorney, Charles Kuck, noted, “You have the government getting a second bite at the apple with a lower burden of proof.”

Lemorin’s case is similar to other immigration cases where the government attempts to deport people after they have been found innocent. Last October, Washington finally dropped a 20-year attempt to deport two Palestinians who lived in Los Angeles. They were among six others, dubbed the Los Angeles 8, who the government was trying to deport solely for distributing pro-Palestinian material and allegedly being supporters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Marc Van Der Hout, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, pointed out, “You have a situation in the L.A. 8 case where the government admitted they did nothing criminal and wanted to use the immigration laws to get rid of them because they didn’t like what they were doing politically.” He said that Lemorin’s situation is similar. “It’s a much tougher row to hoe for the defendant because you have no jury, an immigration judge appointed by the government, and lax rules of evidence.”

The other six defendants, on whom the jury was deadlocked in the original trial, are being retried in Miami. They face up to 70 years in prison based on the actions of FBI informers who tried to coax them into going along with fabricated plans to commit sabotage. The case is constructed exclusively around incriminating statements that were secretly taped by the government agents. FBI deputy director John Pistole called the alleged plan “more aspirational than operational” since no weapons, ammunition or bombs were involved.
 
 
Related articles:
N.Y. cop ‘terror’ squads, dogs to patrol subways
U.S. Senate approves spy bill
Pentagon seeks military trials for six ‘enemy combatants’  
 
 
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