Government finally (kind of) wins after repeated attempts to imprison black supremacists in questionable “sting.” But who loses?
Special to Western Voices
The US federal government’s expensive “war on terror” finally put one of its headaches behind it with the May 12 convictions of five of the seven original “Seas of David” defendants, charged with a plot, “more aspirational than operational,” to attack a number of targets within the US, among them Chicago’s Sears Tower, on behalf of al Qaeda. Arrested in Miami to immense media fanfare and government self-congratulation back in June of 2006, the case of the “Liberty City Seven,” as the defendants soon came to be known, quickly devolved into a pricey farce that led to two acquittals, two mistrials, and widespread questions about just what the government is doing with all the resources, legal concessions and initial public support it gained in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. With the eventual legal victory of 2009, America’s counter-terrorism hierarchy could almost be heard breathing a collective sigh of relief. It was, said one legal commentator, a “must-win” case for the feds.
Two things quickly became apparent soon after the arrests: there was never any real threat of the black supremacist cult members doing damage to America, and at least some of the defendants appeared to be mentally challenged.
Image: The seven original defendants. Two were eventually acquitted.The accused are members of the Seas of David, a black voodoo/”Muslim” cult descended from the Moorish Science Temple, which also incubated the Nation of Islam. The Seas were based in Liberty City, the black Miami slum where, defense witnesses swore, the Seven only worked for the “upliftment” of black people. One pledge, to “kill all the devils we can,” made by the crew to a person they thought was an al Qaeda emissary, passed with little comment in the media. “Devils,” in black Muslim argot, means white people.
The Seas of David were targeted by federal law enforcement in a highly publicized “terror” case in the summer of 2006. The now disgraced Alberto Gonzales, then the Attorney General, joined the White House and various agencies to cheer the arrests, which they claimed highlighted how effective the government has been in expensively clamping down on international and domestic terrorism.
Yet when details of the case were released to the press, the government was widely derided for concocting a prosecution that many saw as weak and cynical. The government admitted at the time of the arrests that America was never in any danger from the “terror ring,” calling the “plot” “more aspirational than operational.”
The government first got the idea of a “setup” after a Yemeni in South Florida, a “convenience store clerk” with what the media call “a criminal history,” mentioned to the feds that he knew of a black “militant” who might seem malleable to the wooing of terrorists. The “militant” was Narseal Batiste, who led the black supremacy Seas of David cult from a warehouse. Known as “Brother Naz” and “Prince Manna,” Batiste preached a “messianic message” to his adoring followers as their leader (or “recruiter,” according to the indictment). Just what that “messianic message” exactly was remains in dispute, but it looks like it will earn him decades in federal prison. Seven, in fact.
Also disputed is why the feds took their next step of bringing in an a second informant. Was it to stop a dangerous terror gang, or was it an investigation that ran out of control into a frame? In any case, the government’s whole case was built around the testimony of their two “snitches.” The second informant was a person, an apparent Arab, able to spin a story saleable to the black targets, posing as a personal representative of Osama himself.
According to reports, the Federal Bureau of Investigation spun an elaborate tale to make the blacks think they were part of a vast al Qaeda plot. The gullible blacks were never in touch with al Qaeda; instead their “al Qaeda contact,” known to them as “Brother Mohammed,” was the undercover federal informant. A crack squad of technical officers recorded the luckless blacks allegedly agreeing to Brother Mohammed’s proposals, in living color: bomb Chicago’s Sears Tower, level the Empire State Building, blast various Hollywood landmarks and, while they were at it, take out Miami’s FBI offices.
The case was packed with absurd details that would be comical if they were not so sad. But among them was a request from the “terror cell” for “al Qaeda” to supply the Seas of David terror commandos with shoes (along with guns, of course, radios and, for some reason, “uniforms”). Federal “surveillance personnel” following the marks must have had some problems: the “terror suspects” couldn’t afford their own cars, and added a request for vehicles to the laundry list handed to Brother Mohammed. But the most egregious display of pathos was probably when the feds, with full hidden video coverage, persuaded their black targets to “pledge allegiance” to Osama and al Qaeda in an absurd “swearing in ceremony,” where they pledged head, heart and hand their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the cause of Islamic jihad and conquest.
The main plank of the defense was the claim that the Seas of David were not the pathetic clowns they appear to be, but were actually hustlers seeking to “play” al Qaeda out of $50,000. Better a knave than a chump.
But America may have been chumped more than the Seas of David. Governmental shot-callers on moralistic high horses pursuing peaceful race realists, prolife advocates, conservatives and veterans on the word of shady hatebaiting “watchdog” agenda groups as “domestic terrorists” have the potential to wreak much more havoc on freedom than the worst of the Islamists could do in their wildest dreams.