MIAMI, Florida — On Thursday, December 14, a mistrial was declared after a jury could not come to a guilty verdict on the U.S. government’s terrorism charges against seven impoverished young African men.
After nine days of deliberation and repeated pressure from the judge to come to a verdict, the jury decided that it could not convict any of the Liberty City Seven (LC7) in the case and issued a not guilty verdict for one of them, Lyglenson Lemorin.
The case of the Liberty City Seven began when seven young Africans — Narseal Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Rotschild Augustine, Burson Augustine, Stanley Grant Phanor, Naudimar Herrera and Lyglenson Lemorin — were kidnapped and imprisoned by FBI agents in June 2006. The government called them terrorists and charged them with sedition (conspiracy to overthrow the government).
In reality, the whole case was manufactured. The FBI sent two agent provocateurs into their midst to create a situation that would give reason to arrest them, much like the FBI did in the 1960s to Black Power organizations.
In this case, the purpose was to be able to give terrorism a black face. Resistance to parasitic U.S. and European imperialism is growing around the world. The U.S. government recognized that the African working class is the most consistently revolutionary sector within U.S. borders and needed to turn the so-called “war on terror” against the African community.
So the FBI agents offered the LC7 $50,000 and gave them at least $4,500 over time to lure them into the government trap. It even bought the men boots and a camera.
Notwithstanding the courts withholding of important evidence that would destroy the credibility of the FBI agents, some jury members apparently saw through the clearly manufactured case and could not render a guilty verdict. The U.S. government has already stated its intentions to retry the bogus case and has set a new trial date for early January.
The African working class — led by the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, an organization that has been waging a campaign to free the LC7 — has won a partial victory in the defense of its national democratic rights in this case. However, the struggle continues to free the remainder of the Liberty City Seven.
