By Chuck Hustmyre
(Continued)
The two men, Osama Sabhi Abulhassan and Ali Houssaiky, both 20, later admitted to having bought 600 cell phones. They said they were going to resell them.
Federal authorities suspected the pair bought the phones to ship to the Middle East, where they could be used to remotely detonate explosives such as those found in roadside IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Osama Sabhi Abulhassan |
Abulhassan and Houssaiky were both charged with supporting terrorism, but several days later that charge was dropped. Prosecutors said they could not prove the men were linked to a known terror group.
Terrorism expert Robert Spencer, author of two bestselling books about Middle Eastern terrorism and director of JihadWatch.org, told Crime Library that just because a lone jihadist isn't linked to a documented terror group doesn't mean that he or she is not a terrorist.
"The ideology is the same," Spencer said. "What unifies (them) ... is this ideology that Muslims must wage war against unbelievers in order to help establish the hegemony of Islamic law over them. Terrorism is one weapon in that struggle."
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