Liberty City terror retrial going to the jury

BY JAY WEAVER

Having already sparred over the same evidence during the first trial last year, the prosecution and defense each made sharper arguments in the retrial of a Miami group accused of plotting with al Qaeda to overthrow the United States...

...Did the Liberty City group intend to join with the terrorist organization in a plot to blow up FBI buildings and Chicago's Sears Tower? Or were the six men trying to con money out of an FBI informant posing as an al Qaeda operative who set them up?...

...The case of the Liberty City group made headlines across the country in June 2006 when the FBI arrested the original seven suspects. The Bush administration trumpeted their arrests as ``yet another important victory in the war on terrorism.''

Yet the prosecution -- relying on FBI wiretaps, phone recordings and videotapes of mainly Batiste, the group's ringleader -- has struggled to prove a crime was committed by true terrorists...[Open in new window]