MIAMI, (Reuters) – A U.S. jury found five men guilty yesterday of plotting with al Qaeda to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and government buildings after two previous attempts to convict the group ended in mistrials.
The jury acquitted a sixth man in a case that was touted nearly three years ago as a major blow against terrorism and a victory in the government’s efforts to dismantle domestic “sleeper cells.”
The guilty verdicts in a trial that lasted nearly three months came after prosecutors tried and failed twice in the last two years to persuade juries that the men conspired with the Islamic militant group to wage holy war against the United States.
Federal agents arrested the men, who became known as the Liberty City Six after the poor Miami neighborhood where they met, in June 2006.
At the time, authorities said the plot was “aspirational rather than operational,” and that the men posed no real threat because they had neither al Qaeda contacts nor the means of carrying out attacks.
