CHICAGO - The father of the accused ringleader of a wacky terrorist cell said yesterday he can't understand how a son who went to church every Sunday and attended Catholic schools could end up charged with plotting to wreak havoc on America's tallest building.
"My son wasn't raised this way. He needs psychiatric help," Narcisse Batiste, 72, told the Daily News yesterday from his home in Bunkie, La. "I disagree with wrongdoing, and I don't believe in trashing the country where you live. If he made statements like that, he definitely needs some psychiatric treatment."
Prosecutors say Narseal Batiste, 32, led a bizarre group of ragtag renegades in Florida who wanted to launch a holy war by bombing the Miami FBI office and Chicago's Sears Tower - the tallest building in North America and a fixture of the skyline in the city where Narseal Batiste was raised.
Narcisse Batiste said his son was arrested in 1993 for breaking a car window. Something happened the next year, the dad said. A charismatic man - who wore a black robe and carried a walking stick, and whose identity he did not know - converted his son to a sect that mixed Islam, Christianity, Judaism and martial arts.
"He talked with God, and he told me he wanted to join the Muslim religion," Narcisse Batiste recalled. "I said, 'Son, you're grown, I can't stop you from doing what you want to do, but don't do anything that will get you in trouble.' He promised me that he wouldn't."
Narseal Batiste was the youngest of six kids in a family of Baptist preachers who alternated between Louisiana and Chicago. Relatives and neighbors in Chicago remember him as a respectful young man who attended the prestigious Brother Rice High School.
"He was a 'yes sir-no ma'am' kind of boy," his uncle John Ford, 67, of Chicago told The News. "This is a tremendous surprise. I can't hardly believe it."
Over the years, Narseal's brothers and sisters found stability in construction work. He married and started a family, but hit tough times - filing for bankruptcy in 2001 while employed as a FedEx driver.
He was distraught after his beloved mother, Audrey, died in 2000, relatives told The News, and the next year he left Chicago and dropped out of sight.
"He didn't tell me," Narcisse Batiste said. "I hadn't seen him for 41/2 or five years. Then I saw him on TV as a criminal. . . . I just can't fit that in my head. Trying to bring harm to anybody, I just can't see it."
Narseal, his wife, Minerva, and their four kids moved to Florida, where they started a contracting company. Prosecutors say he also began recruiting young men to join him in a terror plot.
Originally published on June 25, 2006
