A federal judge in Miami on Wednesday set a Jan. 6 date for the start of the third trial of a Miami group accused of plotting with al Qaeda to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago.
Meanwhile, four of the six defendants in the Liberty City case — who've been held without bond in solitary confinement since their arrests in June 2006 — were released on $50,000 bail each.
The defendants are charged with conspiring to provide ''material support'' to al Qaeda, but prosecutors have failed twice to sway jurors to convict, apparently because some jurors view the FBI investigation more as entrapment than the revelation of a real plot. The jury foreman in the second trial told The Miami Herald that most of the jurors believed the group's ringleader, Narseal Batiste, was guilty, but couldn't connect most of the other defendants to Batiste's alleged terror plot.
Read the full story at MiamiHerald.com.