Posted on 08/09/2007 6:57:23 AM PDT by STARWISE
FBI agents are reviewing surveillance video from a Wal-Mart store in connection with the arrest in South Carolina of two University of South Florida students, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman said.
Agents also have seized a computer from the family home of one of the students, said a local advocate in contact with the family.
Youssef Megahed, 21, and Ahmed Mohamed, 24, both of whom are enrolled at the university, were charged Monday under South Carolina statutes with possession of an incendiary or explosive device. Both were being held in a Berkeley County jail Wednesday. Mohamed's bail was set at $500,000 and Megahed's at $300,000.
Prosecutors in South Carolina said the men were carrying a pipe bomb and pipe-bomb paraphernalia when they were pulled over for speeding there Saturday about seven miles from the Goose Creek Naval Weapons Station.
Mohamed said in court they were carrying fireworks. Megahed's family told the Tampa office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations that Megahed is restoring a car and had tools and oil canisters in the trunk.
Forensic tests from the FBI are pending to determine what the trunk's contents were. The Berkeley County Sheriff's Office detonated what it thought was suspicious.
Sharon Weber, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, confirmed today that the FBI has picked up surveillance footage from "one of our stores" but declined to elaborate, citing the open investigation.
Ahmed Bedier, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said FBI agents seized a computer from the Tampa home of Megahed's family. The family includes Megahed's parents, brother and sister, who through Bedier declined an interview. The family wants to speak to Megahed before talking to reporters, Bedier said.
The FBI declined to comment.
He allowed near-strangers to enter his house ... and cook?
Yeah, that was weird, wasn't it? Maybe it's part of the whole "diversity" thing I don't understand.
To welcome these guys to your neighborhood you invite them to dinner and make them cook.
oh ya.
Ping ~~ Post #38.
I've not seen a sniff of this on the national news. Got to go local to find out what's happening....and we still need to read between the lines.
See post #8, or #38
Never thought of that...you’re probably right. That has happened before, I think it was with the guys that bought a gazillion cell phones.
I think they also said there was only one gunman in Dallas back in November of ‘63...
http://www.charleston.net/news/2007/aug/09/authorities_asked_keep_suspect_safe12583/
Authorities asked to keep bomb suspect safe
BY ANDY PARAS
The Post and Courier
Thursday, August 9, 2007
MONCKS CORNER — The parents of Yousef Megahed have asked authorities to take any action necessary to protect their son during his stay in jail on charges of possessing a pipe bomb, the leader of a Muslim advocacy group said Wednesday.
Ahmed Bedier said the national media attention, widespread speculation about terrorism links and local community reaction has the family concerned about the University of South Florida student’s safety.
“They think all those things are putting their son in a dangerous situation,” Bedier said. “He’s in a (jail) far away from home.”
Megahed, 21, and Ahmed Mohamed, either 24 or 26 according to warrants, were charged with possession of an explosive device after authorities say they found pipe bombs in Megahed’s car during a traffic stop Saturday night. Mohamed was a passenger in the car. Megahed’s first name is also spelled as Yousseff in arrest warrants.
A judge set bond at $500,000 for Mohamed and $300,000 for Megahed. The FBI has said it doesn’t think the men were part of a terrorist plot.
Megahed and Mohamed, both Egyptian citizens living legally in Tampa, Fla., while taking classes at USF, told authorities the items found in the car were fireworks. They also said they were on a weekend road trip to North Carolina.
Bedier, executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the family made the request for their son’s safety Wednesday when Tampa-area FBI agents returned a computer that agents seized from their home Monday. The agents relayed the request to South Carolina authorities, Bedier said.
The family allowed the FBI into their home without a warrant and believes their son is innocent, Bedier said.
Berkeley County sheriff’s Chief Deputy Butch Henerey could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, Henerey said authorities are still waiting on the results from lab tests done on materials found in the trunk of the car. He declined to say what exactly was in the trunk because the FBI seized those items.
“Even when we get the lab results back, it’s not going to change the state charges we already filed,” he said.
Mohamed Melhem, imam of the Central Mosque of Charleston, asked the public not to rush to any judgment about the men.
Noah Haglund contributed to this report. Reach Andy Paras at 745-5891 or aparas@postand courier.com.
~~~~~
So, parents of one apparently live in the Tampa area, and these 2 “students” were taking only 6 and 3 hours respectively of studies. Per week? Per semester? Hmmmmmmmm
~~~~~~~~
Also on the CAIR watch:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/017703.php#more
August 9, 2007
CAIR vs. Robert Spencer
Jacob Laksin and Jamie Glazov write at FrontPage about the CAIR/YAF brouhaha.
It is one of the oddities of American politics that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) can describe itself as a “civil-liberties group” while crusading to crush the free-speech rights of its critics. But that’s exactly what happened last week when CAIR deployed its legal arsenal in a bid to stop author Robert Spencer from speaking at a conference of the Young America’s Foundation (YAF).
In a letter to YAF dispatched by its lawyer, former Democratic National Committee staff counsel Joseph E. Sandler, CAIR threatened to “pursue every appropriate legal remedy” if Spencer were not immediately silenced. In the event, the YAF honorably refused to yield.
The moral of the story: If CAIR disagrees with what you have to say, it’ll fight furiously to deny your right to say it. To heck with civil liberties.
CAIR is not a first-time offender in this regard. Indeed, Spencer is only the most recent target of the organization’s ongoing campaign to strangle free debate, especially when it turns on Islamic extremism.
Other recipients of CAIR’s wrath have included scholar Daniel Pipes, conservative columnist Cal Thomas, talk radio host Michael Graham, venerable news pundit Paul Harvey, National Review magazine, Fox’s 24, and Andrew Whitehead, the proprietor of the website Anti-CAIR.
In a telling example of CAIR’s bullying tactics, Whitehead’s dogged criticism of the organization got him slapped with a defamation suit. When CAIR’s suit was decisively dismissed last year, the victory of an independent critic against the 32-chapter group, with its war chest filled by millions in petrodollars from Saudi royals and Gulf sheikdoms, had a certain David-vs.-Goliath resonance.
Not that CAIR’s zeal to sue critics into submission has waned.
Most recently, the organization has channeled its energies into harassing Zachariah Anani, a Lebanese Islamist turned Christian activist. For the intolerable offense of speaking out against militant Islam, CAIR’s Canadian chapter has worked to have Anani, a Canadian citizen, brought up on hate-crimes charges. Offend CAIR’s delicate sensibilities and you, too, can expect to hear from their lawyer.
It’s bad enough that CAIR has appointed itself unofficial censor of debate about Islam. Equally galling is that the group routinely engages in the kind of sleazy defamation it so righteously claims to detest.
In its letter to YAF last week, CAIR smeared Spencer as a “a well-known purveyor of hatred and bigotry against Muslims.” If that’s true, though, the organization might have been expected to provide some basis for this ostensibly “well-known” charge. CAIR offered not a shred of supporting evidence.
That is because no such evidence exists. Spencer, who heads the site JihadWatch.org and is the author of a recent biography of the prophet Muhammed, The Truth About Muhammed, is a reputable scholar who draws on Islamic sources to substantiate his work.
Contrary to CAIR’s objections, Spencer does not engage in theological polemics. He simply reveals what Islamic sources say.
Which calls forth the question: Why would a group that, by its own account, has no truck with Islamic militants, take such heated issue with an authority on Islam who is guilty of nothing more than highlighting those features of that religion that inspire and sanction Islamic terror?
If CAIR was genuinely opposed to Islamic terror and wanted to bring Islam into the modern and democratic world, why wouldn’t it embrace individuals such as Spencer?
After all, Spencer’s work equips Muslim moderates and reformers with the knowledge they need to confront the Islamic extremists in their midst. Armed with that knowledge, Islamic reformers who undertake the monumental challenge of liberalizing Islam stand a much better chance.
As Spencer himself says: “You can’t reform what you won’t admit needs reforming.”
In the end, it is clear that what CAIR calls “bigotry” and “Islamophobia” is in fact a perfectly defensible historical argument, advanced by Spencer and others, that the roots of modern jihad terrorism can be found in classic Islamic theology.
This is a matter of fact, not prejudice: if it is true, policymakers should take it into account, no matter how inconvenient it may be. Unless one thinks, as CAIR evidently does, that any critical analysis of Islam is a form of actionable hatred, the notion that Spencer is a bigot who must be drummed out of polite society looks like what it really is: the intellectually empty bullying of an extremist fringe.
Here one gets closer to the crux of last week’s contretemps. Mention of its links to Islamic extremist groups invites effusive indignation from CAIR, but a review of the group’s record leaves little room for ambiguity.
CAIR’s forerunner, the Islamic Association of Palestine, was considered by the FBI a front group for Hamas. CAIR’s founder, Nihad Awad is on record supporting Hamas — and, one may thus reasonably conclude, its terrorist attacks against Israelis.
To dismiss these facts as ancient history is to ignore more recent evidence.
This June, for instance, federal prosecutors named CAIR an “unindicted co-conspirator” for allegedly aiding an Islamic charity that was busy providing support to Hamas.
Given these connections to a terrorist movement committed to the mass murder of Jews, for CAIR to accuse anyone of religious “bigotry” is chutzpah on a breathtaking scale.
That CAIR met with defiance last week is heartening.
Still, no one should think that the organization has been chastened. If the past is any guide, those who do not mouth politically correct platitudes about Islamic terrorism will find themselves at the center of CAIR’s litigious attentions.
At which point, one hopes that they will remind the organization that those who stifle reasonable opposition and ally themselves with actual extremists don’t defend civil liberties. They endanger them.
Posted by Robert at August 9, 2007 11:24 AM
~~~~~~~
More troubling articles at JihadWatch link above.
Thanks for the ping. It’s very hard to get more information about this incident. I realize that most of the country never got any to begin with, and if it weren’t for FR, most of us wouldn’t know about it either.
I can see the point of not wanting people to panic, but I do think that letting people know that these guys are out there, stalking us, will make us more vigilant and more able to catch them before they actually get to do anything.
Sorry, CAIR, but these guys were just up to no good. Well, by our standards - from CAIR’s point of view, they probably deserve a gold medal.
“They also said they were on a weekend road trip to North Carolina.”
It is a hike from S FL to NC. Some road trip for one weekend.
Here’s a really interesting article by a local tampa news station. Talks about interview with the neighbor who described the guys’ lifestyle and said she always thought they were terrorists.
http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=60669
I found that while looking for the article that talked about how they had been arrested for shooting squirrels in a Tampa park.
here’s that link:
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/08/08/Hillsborough/FBI_seizes_computers_.shtml
And the paragraph that talks about them being arrested for shooting squirrels on July 24.
“On July 24, Tampa police accused Mohamed of illegally shooting squirrels in an east Tampa park. Police say he and Ahmad A. Ishtay, 19, used a pellet gun to shoot the animals in Rowlette Park.
Both were issued citations for discharging a firearm and using an illegal method of taking game, a report said. The case has not been resolved, court records show.”
Particularly after being "PC" in downplaying any possibility of terrorist activity!
After all..., only the FBI could REALLY have a role in detering a plot..., right?
Thanks, ma’am!
Two great links, dawn53. Squirrel shooting neighbors, with constant traffic, all sorts of UPS deliveries, causing their neighbors concern, and then lickety-splitting at the drop of a hat. All the while being college students - and, oh yes, taking a long-distance “weekend” drive from S FL to NC.
If authorities don’t roust the premises, and grill these guys pretty well (including about their knowledge of auto mechanics - a la Mona Lisa in My Cousin Vinny), then they’ll be derelict.
Sorry, they were in Tampa, not S FL. But then, if they’re enrolled at S FL U, what are they doing in Tampa?
Sherri Jackson who was Megahed's neighbor until March says FBI agents told her they were terrorists.
Jackson says the FBI came to question her Sunday.
Jackson says things seemed suspicious
She says she saw lot of traffic, a lot of people going back and forth, oxygen tanks being delivered UPS and Fed Ex deliveries and a lot going on.
University of South Florida has campuses in Tampa, Sarasota, Lakeland, and St. Pete....but the main campus is in Tampa.
Thanks for posting this dawn53. What a catch!!!
Thanks for your pings Grammy and Miz Sterious, very much appreciated. Sending you two freepmail now.
Whoops — forgot to add your freepnames to the ping. Read post 71.
I have no idea about anything on that subject matter.
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