Elmore Leonard Reenactor Society News, the Continuing Story
Something that doesn’t surprise me is the pattern of acquitals and mistrials in the so-called Seas of David case. Lyglenson Lemorin had moved the hell away from Miami months before the arrests and showed no signs of trying to maintain involvement with the “plot.” His indictment all by itself may have made some jurors suspicious about the fed’s case against the rest.
The prosecution had an arguable “material support” case against the other six, for reasons I discussed way back when:
If the plan presented to Batiste et al was “You film the targets and we’ll send the film off to bigtime terrorists” then the plan was for the Seas of David group to commit a measurable harm. Spies and terrorists use spotters and stringers and cutouts all the time to contribute crucially to evil that someone else will culminate. Person A determines that Person B is living at a certain address. Person A tells Person C, knowing that Person C will have someone very much like Person D go to that address and kill Person B. Person A hasn’t killed anyone, but he has, knowingly, furthered a murder plot. From the perspective of a sincere prosecutor, Batiste’s bunch looks like a group that is perfectly willing to do legwork for a known terrorist organization. And the prosecutor knows that once Batiste’s group cooperates that far, they are blackmail targets - al Qaeda can come back and use their previous deeds to extort more help from them.
All that was leaving aside the possibility of entrapment and the question of whether Batiste et al really believed that the informant was from al-Qaida. As I also wrote in a separate piece, “so far at least, this case has ‘reasonable doubt‘ written all over it.”
I tend to find the defense argument - that the whole “plot” was a con - credible, not least because I anticipated it. At the same time, terrorism presses the hot buttons and it’s a lot harder to prove entrapment than to be entrapped, so I’m not surprised the jury didn’t outright acquit.
Comment by Dave W. —
December 14, 2007 @ 8:13 am
Sometimes I like to wonder how the government would have reacted if these guys had somehow successfully brought down the FBI Building, thinking that that was what “AQ” wanted from them.
Do you think the government would “come clean” if that had happened?
Comment by Dave W. —
December 14, 2007 @ 8:44 am
Or, to put it another way, I think Mr. Henley has stated that it is beyond the pale to believe that the US government arranges terrorist attacks. Yet, that is what they did in this case. They were just lucky that there were no McVeighs in the bunch this time round.
In hindsight we can see that these guys did not have the will or the wherewithal to do serious harm. Is the government competent enough to make those judgements prospectively? If this plot had gotten out of control and resulted in an attack, how would we find out? What evidence would we look at to exonerate the real AQ? Would we even be inclined to look for evidence to exonerate the real AQ?