The Terror Factory Read online

  Rory J. McMahon sat behind a conference table inside his office in North Fort Lauderdale. It was a fall afternoon in 2009, several years after he had been hired by defense lawyers to investigate Abbas al-Saidi. But the case still bothered him. A private investigator who had previously worked as a federal probation officer, McMahon was asked to piece together how exactly al-Saidi came to be an informant who identified a supposed terrorist cell in the poorest section of Miami. That investigation led McMahon to a public housing project in Brooklyn, New York, and a young woman named Stephanie Jennings, who was al-Saidi’s girlfriend. Jennings told McMahon that al-Saidi had been working as an informant for the New York Police Department’s Intelligence Division, which since 9/11 has aggressively monitored Muslim communities in New York and New Jersey.19 For some reason—Jennings was never told why—NYPD handlers became concerned for al-Saidi’s safety and moved him and Jennings to a city-funded public housing project. But they didn’t stay there long.

  One afternoon, one of al-Saidi’s friends from the Middle East knocked on the door. Jennings, home alone, let him in, and with al-Saidi not around, the friend raped her in the apartment. Jennings went to the police and pressed charges; when al-Saidi returned home, she told him what happened. “Instead of saying, ‘I’m going to go kill the motherfucker,’ his response was, ‘We can use this to get money,’ because she pressed charges,” McMahon recalled. “So he goes to the guy. ‘Give me $7,000 and I’ll get Stephanie to drop the rape charge against you.’ So that’s what they do, and he uses the $7,000 for seed money to move to Miami.”

  In South Florida, al-Saidi and Jennings lived in a neatly kept apartment building in Miami Beach, just steps from Biscayne Bay and near the Seventy-Ninth Street Causeway. But their relationship wasn’t as neatly kept as their building. On November 10, 2004, Jennings stepped out of the apartment to smoke a cigarette, which annoyed al-Saidi. When she walked back in, the Yemeni man punched her in the left eye and in the stomach, then bit her on the neck.20 When Jennings, crying, began to complain of pain, al-Saidi called 911. After the police arrived, al-Saidi told them, “I bit her because she choked me!” But the police documented that al-Saidi did not have any bruising to indicate he’d been choked, so they arrested him and charged him with simple battery, a misdemeanor. At the time, al-Saidi told police he was an unemployed laborer.

  Stuck in jail, according to a story he would later tell Jennings, al-Saidi called his former contact at the NYPD Intelligence Division.

  “Is there anything you can do to help me out?” al-Saidi asked.

  “I’m a New York City cop. There’s nothing I can do,” the detective said. “But I work with some FBI agents, and I’ll let them know.”

  FBI agents working under Miami’s Mark Hastbacka then met with al-Saidi. Hastbacka was the agent who supervised the Mandhai investigation as well as a late 1990s case involving Irish Republican Army gun smugglers. What was said or promised to al-Saidi while he was at the Miami-Dade County jail isn’t known. But shortly after al-Saidi’s meeting with the FBI, he was released from jail and prosecutors dropped the battery charge against him. In less than a year, al-Saidi would call the FBI about an alleged terrorist cell in Miami led by a street preacher named Narseal Batiste. And Hastbacka would have himself another high-profile terrorism case in South Florida.

  Though he lived in a one-bedroom apartment and ran a failing drywall business, Narseal Batiste thought of himself as a leader—and as a godlike man. He described himself as the god of his organization and once said he believed that “man has the authority to, on a certain level, be God.” He called himself Prince and required his small group of followers to do the same. Batiste’s hero was Jeff Fort, a Chicago gang leader who co-founded the Almighty Black P. Stone Nation—a black Islam-influenced organization that was financed through criminal activity and maintained order in Chicago’s South Side.21

  Fort and Batiste had a lot in common. Both were born in the South and raised in Chicago. Both called themselves Prince. While Fort worked to help disadvantaged Chicago communities, Batiste wanted to aid poor Miami neighborhoods. Both identified their religions as offshoots of the Moorish Science Temple, though neither was an official member. Fort’s gang would march in Chicago wearing uniforms and kufis, while Batiste and his six followers and drywall employees would exercise on the streets of Liberty City wearing uniforms. And there was one more startling similarity that prosecutors would ultimately use against Batiste to great effect: he and Fort were also both alleged terrorists. In 1987, Fort was convicted of conspiring with Libya to perform acts of terrorism in the United States; he’d offered Muammar Gaddafi his gang’s services in exchange for $2.5 million.22

  Of course, that isn’t altogether different from what the U.S. government alleges Batiste did. He believed al-Saidi had a rich uncle in Yemen who would be willing to send money if Batiste and his group would launch an attack in the United States. Talking big, Batiste claimed to have an army of men at the ready in Chicago. “I can get 5,000 soldiers in Chicago,” he told al-Saidi. “I used to be a leader of the Blackstone Rangers,” he added, referring to Fort’s gang. “They would have done any fuckin’ thing I told them to do.”

  “OK, brother. Do you want to go to Chicago?” al-Saidi asked.

  “Got to go to Chicago.”

  “When you want to go?”

  “As soon as we get the money. Soon as we get the money.”23

  To get the money, however, Batiste would have to meet an associate of al-Saidi’s family. On November 21, 2005, Batiste expressed his concern to the informant about meeting someone new. “We don’t know if this guy might be a double agent,” he said. “He might work for the FBI.”

  “No, he just came from back home,” al-Saidi said. “I don’t believe that, and if I’m getting a trust from my family, from one side, they wouldn’t—they wouldn’t deal with somebody that was like that. I know them; forget it. From the next side, I’m not gonna do anything until I get to know the person.”

  “Um-hmm,” Batiste said, as if to acknowledge the statement.

  “That’s why he’s coming, so he can get—cause they’re saying the same thing,” al-Saidi said. “How can he trust these brothers … I know them for a long time, I trust them, so they’re like, ‘OK.’”

  “A person that’s coming to—coming to evaluate,” Batiste said.

  A few minutes later, Batiste asked al-Saidi about the one who would be coming to evaluate them. “So does he know bin Laden?”

  “I don’t know, brother,” al-Saidi said. “Believe me, I don’t know.”24

  Just as it had in the Mandhai investigation, the FBI brought in Elie Assaad to serve as a closer halfway through the Liberty City sting after al-Saidi couldn’t build a strong enough case to bring to prosecutors. Assaad would again play a terrorist operative named Mohammed. On December 16, 2005, Batiste and Assaad met for the first time. At the meeting, Batiste compared himself to Jeff Fort. Assaad asked Batiste what he needed. In block letters, Batiste scribbled down the following on a Radisson Hotel notepad:

  Boots > knee high > ankle boots

  Uniforms > black security guard type

  Machine guns > automatic hand pistols type

  Radio communication. Nextel, Motorola cell phones.

  Squad cars > SUV Truck > Black color25

  The following week, in a conversation on December 21, 2005, Batiste’s bragging continued. He told al-Saidi that with some financial help he and his men could launch attacks on buildings throughout the country, including in Chicago. “We need to have the gangs go crazy in the streets,” Batiste said. “You see what I’m saying? That will cause a massive confusion.”

  “But you know, brother—” al-Saidi started.

  “Let me tell you something,” Batiste continued. “There’s two major buildings that blow up. The Empire State Building and the Sears Tower. Sears Tower—it’s the tallest building in the world. It used to be the Empire State Building. Then you gotta get—you gotta get the building
s right here in Miami. California, some in Texas. That sounds impossible, but it can be done. It can be done because they can be put on fire. Burn them to the ground. But whatever they take to burn them, whatever they take to destroy them, they gonna have to be destroyed.” Not only were Batiste’s ideas to take down skyscrapers with his ragtag group of six guys far beyond his capability, but they also suggested his grip on reality wasn’t particularly firm. For example, he also told the FBI informant that he believed they could topple the Sears Tower in such a way that it would fall into Lake Michigan and create a tsunami that would destroy parts of Chicago.26

  Over the next three months, Assaad built up a level of trust with Batiste. But oddly, during this time, Batiste never seemed to know which terrorist organization the informant represented. In a March 16, 2006, conversation, Assaad mentioned that he worked for Osama bin Laden—a fact that surprised Batiste.

  “I did not know that, ah, Osama bin Laden was your leader. The great sheikh,” Batiste said.

  “I—” Assaad started, before being interrupted by Batiste.

  “I did not know that.”

  “You didn’t know,” Assaad followed.

  “I didn’t know that, really,” Batiste said.

  “So because I know you send, you send after Al Qaeda. You send—”

  “Well,” Batiste interjected.

  “You send the message?” Assaad said.

  “I just told, ah, I just told Abbas that you know, what I was trying to do and I told them I needed some help. He told me that he knew some people that was fighting in jihad and, and, ah, but there’s so many different types of groups that’s fighting in jihad, like Hamas and all of them. I thought maybe it was probably one of those.”

  Assaad also told Batiste that day that he and his men needed to take a bayat—a pledge of allegiance to Al Qaeda. As the group’s leader, Batiste would need to take the pledge first. But the pledge, recorded and entered into evidence at trial, bore a certain “Who’s on First?” flavor:

  “God’s pledge is upon me, and so is his compact,” Assaad said as he and Batiste sat in his car. “Repeat after me.”

  “Okay. Allah’s pledge is upon you.”

  “No, you have to repeat exactly. God’s pledge is upon me, and so is his compact. You have to repeat.”

  “Well, I can’t say Allah?” Batiste asked.

  “Yeah, but this is an English version because Allah, you can say whatever you want, but—”

  “Okay. Of course.”

  “Okay.”

  “Allah’s pledge is upon me. And so is his compact,” Batiste said, adding: “That means his angels, right?”

  “Uh, huh. To commit myself,” Assaad continued.

  “To commit myself.”

  “Brother.”

  “Brother,” Batiste repeated.

  “Uh. That’s, uh, what’s your, uh, what’s your name, brother?”

  “Ah, Brother Naz.”

  “Okay. To commit myself,” the informant repeated.

  “To commit myself.”

  “Brother.”

  “Brother.”

  “You’re not—you have to say your name!” Assaad cried.

  “Naz. Naz.”

  “Uh. To commit myself. I am Brother Naz. You can say, ‘To commit myself.’”

  “To commit myself, Brother Naz.”

  Things then went smoothly for a while until Assaad came to a reference to being “protective of the secrecy of the oath and to the directive of Al Qaeda.” Here Batiste stopped. “And to … what is the directive of?”

  “Directive of Al Qaeda,” the informant answered.

  “So now let me ask you this part here. That means that Al Qaeda will be over us?”

  “No, no, no, no, no,” Assaad said. “It’s an alliance.”

  “Oh. Well…” Batiste said, sounding resigned.

  “It’s an alliance, but it’s like a commitment, by, uh, like, we respect your rules. You respect our rules,” Assaad explained.

  “Uh, huh,” Batiste mumbled.

  “And to the directive of Al Qaeda,” Assaad said, waiting for Batiste to repeat.

  “Okay, can I say an alliance?” Batiste asked. “And to the alliance of Al Qaeda?”

  “Of the alliance, of the directive—” Assaad said, catching himself. “You know what you can say? And to the directive and the alliance of Al Qaeda.”

  “Okay, directive and alliance of Al Qaeda,” Batiste said.

  “Okay,” the informant said. “Now officially you have commitment and we have alliance between each other. And welcome, Brother Naz, to Al Qaeda.”27 Assaad then administered the oath to five of Batiste’s six followers—Patrick Abraham, Stanley Phanor, Rotschild Augustine, Burson Augustin, and Naudimar Herrera. (By then, the sixth follower, Lyglenson Lemorin, had left the group.)

  After administering the oath, Assaad spoke in front of the group about a secret message from Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda, Assaad told the men, was planning to blow up five FBI buildings around the country, including the one in Miami, and needed assistance in obtaining videos and photographs of these buildings. Batiste, in turn, requested a van for the surveillance and a memory chip for his personal camera. On March 24, 2006, Batiste and Patrick Abraham drove Assaad to a Circuit City, where he bought a memory chip. They then drove by and identified the FBI building in North Miami Beach, the National Guard armory and a Jewish synagogue.

  Throughout all of this, how dedicated Batiste really was to committing an act of terrorism remains questionable. The FBI’s undercover recordings suggested that Batiste, who was having trouble paying the rent on his warehouse, was mostly trying to shake down his “terrorist” friend. After first asking the informant for $50,000, Batiste is recorded in conversation after conversation asking how soon he’ll have the cash.

  “Let me ask you a question,” he said in one exchange. “Once I give you an account number, how long do you think it’s gonna take to get me something in?”

  “So you is scratching my back, [I’m] scratching your back—we’re like this,” Assaad dodged.

  “Right,” Batiste said.28

  To prove that he had connections in Chicago, Batiste suggested that they fly Charles James Stewart to Miami. Stewart, also known as Sultan Khan Bay, was a convicted rapist and a leader of the Moorish Science Temple in Chicago. He also was affiliated with Jeff Fort’s gang, the Almighty Black P. Stone Nation. Assaad gave Batiste $3,500 to fly Stewart and his wife from Chicago. Batiste was able to convince Stewart to come down by saying that they needed him to help them start a Moorish Science Temple in Miami.

  In meetings recorded by the FBI, Batiste and Stewart smoked marijuana as they discussed absurd plans, such as opening a shop to sell drugs and building a Moorish nation in the United States. But Stewart’s visit to Miami ultimately backfired on Batiste—and the FBI—as the two men began to disagree about the direction of the Miami organization. After Batiste told Stewart about his plans with al-Saidi and Assaad, Stewart told him that he was being duped by FBI informants. Stewart then kicked Batiste out of his own organization and took command of the small group.

  The so-called terrorist cell al-Saidi had initially identified was falling apart. A few members sided with Batiste; the others cut off all ties. Master G.J.G. Atheea, one of Batiste’s former spiritual advisers, confronted Stewart in Miami to complain about how he had treated Batiste. Whether Atheea did this of his own volition isn’t known, as he was also working as an FBI informant at this point. And that’s when the Liberty City case gets even stranger. Stewart, angered by being confronted, pulled out a gun and began firing at Atheea, who escaped unharmed. Police then arrested Stewart for possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. Federal prosecutors filed charges, and ultimately Stewart cut a deal to become a government witness against Batiste.

  After Stewart’s arrest, the FBI raided Batiste’s warehouse in Liberty City and federal prosecutors charged him and his followers with conspiracy to support terrorism, destroy buildings, and levy
war against the U.S. government.

  James J. Wedick, a former FBI supervisory agent who spent more than three decades at the Bureau, was hired to review the Liberty City Seven case as a consultant for the defense. I met with him at his home outside Sacramento, California, in late 2010 and asked him about the case. His first reaction was a smirk. “These guys couldn’t find their way down the end of the street,” Wedick said of Batiste and his followers. “They were homeless types. And, yes, we did show a picture where somebody was taking the oath to Al Qaeda. So what? They didn’t care. They only cared about the money. When we put forth a case like that to suggest to the American public that we’re protecting them, we’re not protecting them. The agents back in the bullpen, they know it’s not true.”

  Indeed, the Justice Department had a difficult time winning convictions in the Liberty City Seven case. It was clear from trial testimony that Batiste, the alleged ringleader, was merely bullshitting with the FBI informants, free-flowing with absurd ideas he’d picked up from popular culture in the hopes that he might see some cash at the end of the hustle. For example, when his lawyer asked him on the stand how he came up with the idea to bomb the Sears Tower, Batiste answered: “Just from watching the movies.”29 In three separate trials, juries deadlocked on most of the charges, eventually acquitting two of the defendants—Lyglenson Lemorin and Naudimar Herrera—and convicting the other five of crimes that landed them in prison for between seven and thirteen years.* (To date, Lemorin’s and Herrera’s acquittals are the exceptions to what is otherwise a perfect conviction record for FBI terrorism sting cases that go to trial.) Despite the eventual convictions, the U.S. government was never able to show in any of the three trials that the Liberty City Seven had the ability to commit an act of terrorism were it not for the FBI informants providing them with the means.

  For the Justice Department, the case was an early test of what has become known as preemptive prosecution—when the government uses terrorism conspiracy charges to make the case for what defendants would have done if not busted by federal law enforcement. Liberty City Seven prosecutor Jacqueline Arango emphasized this in her closing arguments. “The government need not wait until buildings come down or people get shot to prove people are terrorists,” she said. But if the government doesn’t need to show that defendants committed the crime, Batiste’s lawyer asked the jury in her closing argument, how can we be sure that they would have committed the crime without the prodding of government informants? “This is not a terrorism case,” Ana Jhones told the jury. “This is a manufactured crime.”30