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.
Fred Dalton Thompson
What could the USF students do by adding oxygen tanks to their ingredients list? Besides blow up a 30-ft great white, that is.
recently there was a thread about a father who beat his daughter’s boyfriend, then got a gun and shot thru her barricaded bedroom door, hitting the boyfriend who it appears will be paralyzed for life. The father was charged with an attempt to commit a terrorist act.
These young men had a truckload full of explosives, but no such charge against them? Maybe if they had names like Jones and Smith, there would have been terror charges brought. CAIR, with membership below your local VFW, has the authorities terrorized about bringing charges against any Muslims or peopole with Muslim names, or people from the Middle East. Just can’t have any ‘racial profiling.’
Grazie. I confess I’m not particularly adroit at FL geography (having never visited - why travel from TX to FL?)
Thanks on the FDT, and I couldn’t agree more. I’m a Rudy guy - and I appreciate that Freeper mainstreamers are not particularly pleased with America’s mayor. Myself, I’m confident Rudy will not take any guff abroad, including at the UN.
Here’s a link to the college for you. It has a map on the mainpage showing the area where the campuses are located.
From post #71: squirrel target practice and having oxygen tanks delivered to their apartment
Great finds .... and all thanks to Betty Castor, former President of USF, who despicably ignored govt warnings about al-Arian’s terrorist links and involvements and kept him on paid leave and then rehired him, even after being alerted to his shenanigans! Thank God she lost her senatorial bid to Martinez .. a schlump in many ways, but not high on terrorism and a freaking, squeaking lib like she is.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={869A7ABB-5AA7-43E4-AEB9-DD0311A5146D}
“Al-Arian, a Palestinian immigrant, was a professor of engineering at the University of South Florida when in 1994, investigative journalist Steven Emerson aired a documentary establishing that, as president of the Islamic Committee for Palestine, Al-Arian headed the “primary support group in the United States for [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad,” a notorious terrorist group.
How did Al-Arian’s employer respond to this news? Betty Castor, then-president of USF and now the Democratic candidate for Senate, neither took steps to fire Al-Arian nor criticize him.
Instead, she ordered a review of his dossier and only in 1996 placed him on non-disciplinary administrative leave with full pay – a form of paid vacation. When the U.S. government failed to indict him by 1998, she reinstated Al-Arian in his old teaching job and a year later she left USF.
(It was only after passage of the USA PATRIOT act, giving law enforcement access to intelligence information, that Al-Arian was finally in February 2003 indicted and arrested on terrorism charges.)
Mel Martinez, Castor’s Republican opponent, argues that Castor provided “weak leadership” in failing to protect her university from Islamic Jihad, that she fussed about academic freedom instead of grappling with a campus terrorist cell by firing the man he calls the “terrorism professor.”
Castor replies that union and university rules tied her hands.
She then went on the offensive, digging up a picture of George W. Bush campaigning at a strawberry festival in Florida in 2000 – and who should be there, grinning with the future president, but Sami Al-Arian.
Castor’s ad charges that “As chair of George Bush’s Florida campaign, Martinez allowed suspected terrorist Sami Al-Arian to campaign with Bush, years after Al-Arian was suspended by Betty Castor.”
This accusation looks powerful – except that three factual errors undermine it: Martinez was not chair but one of eight honorary co-chairmen; he did not “allow” the photograph to take place but had no knowledge of a spontaneous campaign event; and Castor gave Al-Arian a long vacation rather than suspend him (which is a disciplinary action).
More broadly, the Martinez campaign rightly points out that the two candidates have hardly equivalent records. “Mel Martinez never allowed Sami Al-Arian to do anything, unlike Betty Castor, who allowed Al-Arian to operate on her campus for six years.” Or in Rudy Giuliani’s more pungent formulation, Castor “couldn’t figure out how to fire an alleged terrorist.”
~~~~~~~~
Debbie Schlussel is also reporting on it:
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/
Excerpt:
“And these arrests focus attention on the University of South Florida which is the former employer of one of the founders of the terrorist organization, The Palestinian Islamic Jihad as well as Professor Sami Al-Arian who was convicted for conspiracy for helping that organization.
And now once again USF is under the microscope. [DS: AND also Mana Saleh Almanajam and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran, the two Saudi students who boarded a schoolbus of children in Tampa as a dry run, were also students at USF.]
SF spokesman Ken Gullette says to focus on things like that is grossly unfair. [DS: Not Really.]
It may seem unfair to the university, but the arrests make it a fact USF will have to live with again.
USF bristles at the thought it could be a hot bed of terrorist activity, but in the 90’s the FBI warned the university that problems were brewing and our sources say the University didn’t want to hear it.
Hey FBI, you got shone up by the far smarter, far competent sheriff’s deputies of Berkeley County, South Carolina.”
Whell.... I like Rudy even less than FDT but not a lot less. I favor Willard. But you guys do seem to get a raw deal around here. It’s not like you are supporting him from the left.
Sounds very official...
their fire works? probably the equivalent of blasting caps/...what sreqd to initiate the blast
bttt!
ping
Yeah, but didn't the FBI say that about the world trade center on 9/12?
I believe in the muslim world anyone can ask another “believer” to feed them... and they will grant the request.
Fourth of July has passed.
Well of course it's not linked to terrorism. Do you expect the Feds to level with us? When have they told us a truth in the last 6 years? Better we use our own sixth sense of what we read into it. Better to err on the cautious side- every time.
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