Four men described as soldiers in a terrorism plot to destroy Chicago’s Sears Tower and bomb FBI offices have each been sentenced to less than a decade behind bars, far less than federal prosecutors sought.
U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard, in sentencing hearings Wednesday and Thursday, said the four were followers who participated far less than ringleader Narseal Batiste in discussions about possible attacks. The conversations were recorded by the FBI using an informant posing as an al-Qaida operative.
The plot never got past the discussion stage, which has led defense attorneys and terrorism experts to describe the case as overblown since the “Liberty City Seven” were arrested in June 2006. Lenard appeared to share that sentiment, at least for the four men who were sentenced.
“As I see this case, these young men were looking for something. I don’t know, maybe it was their naivete and youth that made them fall under the influence of a man with a need to control, and they became his followers,” Lenard said.
Prosecutors sought between 30 and 50 years in prison for each of the four. Batiste, a former FedEx deliveryman from Chicago, is facing a maximum of 70 years when he is sentenced Friday. They were convicted in May in the third trial of the case following two mistrials. Two of the original suspects were acquitted.
Lenard sentenced Batiste’s self-described “No. 1 soldier,” Patrick Abraham, 30, to a little more than nine years Thursday. Stanley Phanor, 34, got eight years, and two other men were sentenced to less time Wednesday. Lenard said a terrorism enhancement that applies in each case would result in an unreasonably harsh sentence, so she opted for leniency.
Abraham, a Haitian native who has been jailed since his 2006 arrest, apologized but said he never sought to be a terrorist.
“I am not nobody’s enemy,” he said. “I am not the government’s enemy.”
Batiste, 35, testified at the trials that he faked being a terrorist in hopes of scamming the FBI informant out of $50,000 for his struggling construction business. Prosecutors portrayed him as a leader of a paramilitary sect that did not recognize U.S. government authority, and who hoped to use chaotic attacks on the 110-story Chicago skyscraper, now known as Willis Tower, to start an anti-U.S. war.
A key piece of evidence was a ceremony led by the informant, and taped by the FBI, in which each man pledged loyalty to al-Qaida.
