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Surveillance Tape Played In Liberty City 7 Trial

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Oct 3, 2007 2:54 pm US/Eastern

Surveillance Tape Played In Liberty City 7 Trial

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MIAMI (CBS4) ― Boots, black uniforms, and machine guns.

Those are just a few of the items listed by Narseal Batiste, the alleged leader of the so called "Liberty City 7," during a conversation that was secretly videotaped by the FBI as he met with an FBI informant who was posing as an al Qaeda operative.

That tape was played back to a jury Wednesday as the lead FBI agent who investigated the men took the stand.

Prosecutors claim Batiste asked for these items in his quest to raise an "Islamic army" to fight a guerrilla war that included detonating bombs at the Sears Tower in Chicago and several federal buildings in Miami.

Defense lawyers plan to argue that Batiste and his co-defendants were all talk and said whatever the government paid informants wanted to hear in order to receive money for their church.

The FBI had been investigating Batiste and six other men from Miami's Liberty City neighborhood after another informant tipped agents about the group in September 2005.

The seven men have pleaded not guilty to charges that carry combined maximum sentences of some 70 years in federal prison.

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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