Has anyone followed this story closely:
When 24-year-old Ahmed Mohamed and 21-year-old Yousef Megahed appeared in court, there was no question in the prosecutor’s mind what this was all about. She says Mohamed was in possession of pipe bombs and materials that could have been made to make more bombs.
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.
Former FBI agent and terrorist expert Oscar Westerfield if they are terrorist the FBI must find out who is involved in this thing and how far does it go.
Westerfield says much investigation has to be done, but he is concerned that the car was stopped with explosives 7 miles from a naval base that housed detainees, adding it doesn’t look good.
But Council of American Islamic Relations head Ahmed Bedier says people are moving too quickly to convict they two students and his information is that they just had firecrackers.
I have paid very little attention to this story, as it was clearly overshadowed by the greatest threat to humanity, Scott Beauchamp. At any rate, the story arc as I followed it was they were arrested, several blogs reported they were terrorists, about 24 hours later I heard on CNN or MSNBC or something that the FBI determined it was not terrorism related (again referenced at the end of this piece), it dropped off my radar for a few days, and now, via Memeorandum, I see we are back to terrorism related questions.
Does anyone have more?
over_educated
Apparently Scott Beauchamp was sending them coded messages through his blog…
The Xsociate
Sorry for the blogwhoring but I seem to have been one of the few in left Blogtopia to note this story over the weekend. And even though more has come out since then, it’s still difficult to get a bead on the details because the media has been very liberal in throwing around words like “pipe bombs” and such. One report I saw, however, suggested that the suspicious items found were possibly the makings of a homemade rocket. And given that one of the men involved is an engineering student, I don’t think it’s out of the question that they may have just been a little too enthused about their amateur rocketry.
I’ve also noticed that they’re seems subtle attempts to somehow imply a terrorism link. For instance, just about every report I’ve read has made mention that the men were stopped near the Naval Brig that has housed enemy combatants. And the article you quote above mentions Profressor Sami Al-Arian, thus implicating the men are somehow connected. I’ll see what more I can dig up in the Google and keep you posted.
HyperIon
IIRC i saw something on a wingnut site that was complaining about the fact that one published news report did not mention the MW origin of the folks arrested. Because, of course, that would explain everything!
Jill
Have the FBI arrested anyone in connection with terrorism and successfully prosecuted said terrorists? No. I believe this will fall into the Miami 7 bamboozlement and many others that have had grand arrests that amounted to nothing.
Punchy
John, a Brown person found in possession of a squirt gun (liquid anthrax!) within 250 miles of any Naval, Army, or AF base and/or recruiting center is a terrorist.
However, some fundy nut 5 feet away of an abortion clinic tossing around 2 road flares and a crapload of wires and duct tape is simply expressing free speech.
All men are creating equal, remember?
BobJones
Is the only basis for claiming they are terrorists the neighbor who said thats what the FBI told her? Because this guy says the FBI told him the opposite. Of course, he is a Muslim/Brown person too, so he is probably also a terrorist.
Formerly Wu
The details seem suspicious. But I’m inclined to let the FBI do its job for now, at least until more facts are made public.
Let’s wait until we hear about some actual injustice before we start laying into them, hm?
Rudi
The news accounts are coming from Florida where the “brown skins” lived. The arrest was outside of Charleston South Carolina many miles from any military base.
Goose Creek, South Carolina
http://www.google.com/maps?q=Goose+Creek,+SC,+USA&sa=X&oi=map&ct=title
It’s strange that a Charleston paper(The Post and Courier) doesn’t have a peep on these Islamo-Stooges.
http://www.charleston.net/
Maybe the likes of Michele Malkin wetted their diapers. MM wont rest until all “brown skins” (excluding herself) are locked up in internment camps and the ghost of McCarthy takes over white America.
whatsleft
Hmm, what I recall about reading this is that they were stopped “near” the Naval Base with these disputed materials, which they claim were for fireworks but which the police said were not fireworks, but while similar to bomb-making materials, may yet turn out to be benign. Given the engineering component, it seems likely this will turn out to be BWRM (Brown with Rocket Materials).
rawshark
It’s too early to play the blame game.
babyinthecorner
Remember that big news story from a few years ago about the terrorists who were convicted of building and possessing a cyanide bomb here in the U.S.? The story about actual WMD on U.S. soil?
No? Never heard of it?
Could it be because the media ignored this story because the convicted terrorists were white (supremacists) from East Texas? The kewl kidz in the media only write about brown terrorists.
not the senator
But not too early for Wacky Debbie (I see Muslims!)Schlussel to have tried and found them guilty:
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2007/08/megahed_update-.html
Evidence is over-rated.
dslak
I find it funny that anyone would seriously believe a neighbor’s claim that “the FBI said they were terrorists.” I know the Bush administration has politicized every square inch of the government, but that is a pretty big deviation from law enforcement SOP.
Also, it would be more believable if the neighbor mentioned having to evacuate while the FBI were searching for explosives.
Rudi
The link to Google maps of Goose Creek doesn’t show the ocean as a border of Goose Creek. They were just guilty of DWBrown, tell Little Debbie, they could attack BigMac in Michigan with smoke detector dirty bombs triggered by wal-Mart cell phones. Why if they read IHT and ArmsControlWonks they will attack our “ice-cube supply” with polonium-2010.
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1595/sneaky-terrorists-and-smoky-bombs
Rudi
On a serious note, those dirty brown skinned terrorist rockteers were arraigned yesterday.
Zifnab
Remember, no crime has been committed until Nancy Grace has weighed in on exactly how guilty they are and Glenn Beck has wet himself while graphically displaying how to lynch them..
salvage
Hmmm neighbor or FBI?
This story seems weird but if the FBI isn’t too worried about it I don’t see why anyone else should be.
Don
It’s interesting to me that folks like Schlussel seem to be real big on the trust-the-government when it comes to law enforcement powers and tools but repeatedly attack the federal law enforcement agencies, like how she keeps claiming the Feebs are covering up the real story with these two students.
She’s more imaginative than me, I guess – I can’t think of any reason the FBI would be doing such a thing.
What’s really offensive in her chatter is stuff like this FROM SOMEONE WHO IS A LAWYER:
Well, DUH. How could any lawyer think less of a person for doing the smart thing and availing themselves of counsel when arrested? I understand how some wingnuts believe that kind of thinking could only come from a dirty ACLU member liberal – they believe only guilty people hire lawyers.
How does an actual lawyer come to that, though? Does this mean she thinks every one of her clients is therefor guilty?
KCinDC
The real question is why Tampa Bay’s 10 News is posting unedited collections of reporter’s notes as stories. Read through that quote. Do you often run across news stories full of things that aren’t even sentences, much less hang together into an actual article?
Rudi
John sorry about hijacking the thread, but your in mighty fine company at Meme.
Badtux
Given the sensationalistic reporting that has taken place regarding Lite-Brites of Mass Destruction and so forth, I hold a healthy skepticism to anything reported in regards to this subject. Maybe we’ll find out the truth someday. Maybe not. In any event, it’s pretty clear that what is reported is typical he said/she said — just a bunch of stenography with no attempt to find out the truth.
– Badtux the Stenography-sniffing Penguin
Tax Analyst
Will wait for further information before making a call here. If these guys really had pipe bombs then I’m not buying the “Sir, these are only really, really big firecrackers that we did not have time to use on the 4th of July when we were celebrating wonderful American Freedoms”.
If it looks like a pipe bomb it probably is. But before we pack these guys off to permanent solitary confinement I’d like the evidence to be fairly scrutinized and actual real charges filed against the men, followed by allowing them the right to retain an Attorney. Hey, maybe they could even have a Fair Trial…maybe.
Longhairedweirdo
Wow. Schlussel reported that, according to a newspaper interview reporting hearsay, there was all kinds of suspicious stuff going on, and pointed out that the prosecuting attorney is alleging a crime has been committed, and we all know that never happens unless a crime actually was. I mean, isn’t that what really sucks about jury duty? You already *know* the accused is guilty, but you have to go through this long, boring *trial* anyway?
Did someone say this idiot (by which I mean Schlussel) is an *attorney*? If so, I’m appalled.
Rudi
LongHair – I live in greater Detroit, she is an attorney but I don’t know if she practices. She only loves the government when they railroad brownskins. She has a vendetta against local Federal attorneys and prosecutors because they won’t round up Dearbornistas and put them in internment camps. She’s a fanatical JAP who hates Arabs.
RSA
I think that someone with the last name of Megahed can’t be all bad. As long as he isn’t Brainiac in disguise.
ding7777
Since the Dems caved on the FISA bill , they can go back to being non-terrorists for now.
yet another jeff
Yep, they’ll be terrorists again when “important legislation” is on the table. For now, they’re safely non-terrorists. They should be terrorists again sometime between now and Nov 2008.
Jake
Journalism at its absolute worst. WTF? The FBI says they’re aren’t terrorists but that’s what the neighbor says. Cripes.