By Chuck Hustmyre
October 8, 2007
TAMPA, Fla. (Crime Library) -- A federal judge ruled Monday that both south Florida college students arrested in August with a trunk load of bomb-making materials just miles from a U.S. Navy weapons base should stay in jail.
U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday agreed with arguments made by prosecutors in a bail hearing Friday that both men are flight risks and that both are potentially dangerous.
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| Megahed and Mohamed in Court |
Sheriff's deputies stopped Youssef Samir Megahed, 21, and Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, 24, in Goose Creek, S.C. in August. Inside the trunk of the men's Toyota Camry, the deputies found four pieces of PVC pipe, 20 feet of fuse, a drill, several gallons of gasoline, and gunpowder, all the components needed to make pipe bombs, according to a recently released FBI affidavit.
The town of Goose Creek is about 15 miles from the Charleston Naval Weapons Station, which is also home to a military prison complex used to house suspected terrorists captured overseas.
Both men are Egyptian students studying engineering at the University of South Florida. Megahed is a permanent U.S. resident, and Mohamed is in this country on a student visa.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian government announced last week it would hire an attorney to represent Mohamed.
"We are responsible for the sons of Egypt abroad with no exception," Ahmed el-Qawassni, a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, told The Associated Press.
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| Mohammed Atta |
Sept. 11 terrorist leader Mohamed Atta was also from Egypt, although it was unclear from el-Qawassni's comment if he meant to take responsibility for Atta's part in the deaths of 3,000 Americans on 9/11.
Both men have been indicted for illegally transporting explosives across state lines, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison, but a federal grand jury also charged Mohamed with distributing information related to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction, a terrorism-related violation that could bump his sentence to 30 years behind bars.
The additional charge came after investigators found on Mohamed's laptop computer a video he made that showed how to convert radio controlled toys into detonators for bombs, like the roadside IEDs that have killed or wounded thousands of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to an FBI affidavit, Mohamed told investigators he made the video "to assist those persons in Arabic countries to defend themselves against the infidels invading their countries."
He also said he considers the United States an infidel invader of Arabic countries.
New information presented at Friday's bail hearing for Megahed, showed that as the two men left Florida for South Carolina they made an early morning stop at a Wal-Mart in Ocala, Fla. and tried to buy rifles. They weren't able to buy them only because no one was on duty in that department of the store at the time.
Andy Savage, the high-profile Charleston, S.C. attorney who now represents Megahed, claims the charges against his client are unfounded.
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