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.”
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.
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.
Thanks for posting this dawn53. What a catch!!!
Thanks for your pings Grammy and Miz Sterious, very much appreciated. Sending you two freepmail now.
What could the USF students do by adding oxygen tanks to their ingredients list? Besides blow up a 30-ft great white, that is.
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.”