Because two new defendants have just been charged, there will be little or no public movement for at least six months in the case accusing 12 men of plotting the violent overthrow of the communist government in Laos.

In a new indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Sacramento on Sept. 17, brothers Jerry Yang and Thomas Yang of Stockton were named as conspirators along with 10 men indicted two years and four months ago.

All 12 defendants have pleaded not guilty.

The federal indictment accuses the group of conspiring to mobilize an insurgent force with the aim of transforming Laos into an American-style democracy. The prosecution contends the men were planning to arm Hmong people in Laos for a revolt against the country's communist rulers.

Bruce Locke and Peter Kmeto, attorneys for Jerry Yang and Thomas Yang, respectively, told U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. that they need at least six months to digest 85,000 documents and hundreds of hours of audio and video recordings of secretly taped conversations and events already turned over by prosecutors to the defense.

Lead prosecutor S. Robert Tice-Raskin asked Damrell to set another court date three months out, but the judge set a status conference for March 15, saying he hoped that would give defense lawyers time to complete their review.

The new indictment omitted Vang Pao, legendary leader of a CIA-sponsored guerrilla army of Hmong and Iu Mien soldiers that fought Southeast Asian communists for 14 years, as the above-the-title defendant.

Energized by Vang's dismissal, several hundred demonstrators staged a three-hour rally Monday in front of Sacramento's federal courthouse, chanting, "What do we want? Case dismissed! When do we want it? Now!"

Some of the loudest voices belonged to 60 Burbank High School students who skipped morning classes to support what they said is long-overdue recognition of the Hmong who gave their lives fighting alongside American forces during the Vietnam War.

"We've been waiting for a hecka lot of years and we have to take a stand," said Sia Her, 15.

In the courtroom, San Francisco attorney James Brosnahan, representing Youa True Vang, and federal Defender Daniel Broderick, representing retired Army Lt. Col. Harrison Jack, got their digs in at the prosecution over Vang's dismissal.

Brosnahan pointed out that the evidence against Vang consisted mainly of sworn statements by an undercover agent describing the only recorded meeting Vang attended at which the coup was discussed. Transcripts of that meeting do not reflect discussion the agent attributed to Vang in the affidavits.

The special agent, working for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was posing as a black market arms dealer anxious to support the Laos insurgency by selling his wares. Much of the case against the 12 remaining defendants also hinges on the agent's reports.

Vang's dismissal is "an undercutting of this agent, whose assertions against Vang Pao were not on tape," Brosnahan said.

Broderick told Damrell the defense now has transcripts of translated telephone conversations that were wiretapped in June 2007, two days before the initial charges in a criminal complaint. The transcripts show that Vang Pao had emphatically told Hmong leaders the coup was "a no go. This ain't gonna happen," Broderick said.

Yet, he noted, prosecutors later chose to charge Vang as the leader of the plot.

Tice-Raskin has acknowledged some foreign language intercepts were not translated and transcribed before the first indictment, but argued at a May hearing that there was enough evidence to charge the defendants, including Vang, without those translations.

At the close of Monday's hearing, Tice-Raskin told the judge, "We will just leave it that we disagree with the remarks made by defense counsel." To which Brosnahan replied, "And I will leave it that we've heard those words before with respect to General Vang Pao."

Call The Bee's Denny Walsh, (916) 321-1189.