Mystery at Goose Creek update: Egyptian officials to meet with indicted suspects
Here’s the very latest on the mystery at Goose Creek:
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry stated Sunday that Egyptian officials are to meet with the two Egyptian students charged with transporting explosives in the United States. The students were arrested on August 4 in South Carolina. A federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida has indicted them on charges of illegally transporting explosives over state lines.
“Officials from the Egyptian embassy in Washington will meet the two students at their place of detention on Wednesday,” the ministry said Sunday.
“The Foreign Ministry will spare no efforts in defending the interests of Egyptians abroad as long as they respect the laws of the countries they are in.”
Egypt’s official news agency MENA reported Saturday that Washington denied Cairo’s request to meet with the two men.
The two University of South Florida, Ahmed Abdel Latif Sherif and Youssef Samir Megahed were arrested after being stopped for speeding in Goose Creek, South Carolina and police say they found “pipe bombs” in their car.
Sherif is a graduate engineering student and teaching assistant at the University of South Florida in Tampa, while Megahed is a civil engineering student.
Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit met Sunday with Ahmed’s father, the ministry added.
Megahed’s father, who lives in the U.S., said Saturday he and his son have cooperated with federal investigators, but the situation is worsening.
“They want us to say what they want to hear,” the father told The Tampa Tribune Saturday. “They want the stories they have in mind. It’s all in their imagination.”
FYI, I’ve created a separate category for prior Goose Creek coverage. “All in their imagination?” I’ll keep posting. You decide.
Over the long holiday weekend, you may have missed the Investigative Project’s report alleging that one of the suspect’s had a terror past in Egypt:
Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, 24, an engineering graduate student and teaching assistant at the Tampa-based university, faces terrorism charges for teaching and demonstrating how to use the explosives.
According to officials familiar with the case, Mohamed has been arrested previously in Egypt on terrorism-related charges. He is said to have produced an Internet video showing how to build a remote-controlled car bomb.
You may recall that when the indictments came down last week, one federal law enforcement official told the press:
Agents think civil engineering student Ahmed Mohamed exchanged information over the Internet about how to miniaturize bombs, said a federal law enforcement official speaking anonymously because the investigation remains secret.
Over at the Tampa Tribune, Megahed’s family attacks the feds. The article concludes:
FBI agents tell Megahed they’ll keep him in jail a long time or deport him to Egypt or send him to Guantanamo Bay, Samir said. “They keep trying to push him to say things.”
Samir has been in touch with the father of his son’s co-defendant. After the arrest, Mohamed’s father called Samir from his home in Egypt to exchange information, and the two realized they studied together at Cairo University in the early 1970s while earning their engineering degrees.
Samir said he had not been in touch with Mohamed’s father in 30 years, and that their acquaintance is a coincidence. Since they’ve reconnected, Mohamed’s father has depended on Samir as a connection to his own son as he waits for a resolution to the case.
Now Samir has to figure out how to relay what Mohamed told him in the jail.
“How can I tell a father, ‘You are not going to see your son again’? It’s like you sent your son to the war, and he dies there.”
Hmmm.
***
4:00pm Eastern update. State authorities in SC hand over the case to the feds…
With a federal indictment in place, state charges will be dismissed against two Egyptian-born students who were stopped last month with what authorities said were pipe bombs, a prosecutor said Tuesday. “I plan to dismiss the charges in favor of federal prosecution,” said Scarlett Wilson, state prosecutor for Charleston and Berkeley counties.
Stay tuned for a hearing expected this week…and the inevitable CAIR fist-pounding.
See what others have said
Note from Michelle: This section is for comments from michellemalkin.com's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that I agree with or endorse any particular comment just because I let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with my terms of use may lose his or her posting privilege.
Trackbacks
- Riehl World View
- Hyscience
- Bill's Bites
- I’m A Pundit Too » Blog Archive » Jihad Central 9-04-07
- One Of The SC Pipebombers May Have Terrorist Past « Nice Deb
- Tel-Chai Nation
- walmart gps
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Categories: Goose Creek
Riehl World View
» Bet: Ratings Fail - Oprah/Obama Christmas Special
Mudville Gazette
» The five-year planNewsBusters.org
» Oprah To Do Primetime Christmas Special With The ObamasRiehl World View
» Dowd: Dem Elites Displeased With Obama As Palin RisesStop The ACLU
» SEALs Charged With Assault for Arresting Top TerroristPundit & Pundette
» How much did that "tent" cost?
Did you?
Unknowingly perhaps, but did you?
This should bring to the forefront the problems with student visas in this country since 9/11.
I am sure there are “students” missing from universities today that accepted them this week. The “students” gain a visa but never report to class,and are never heard from again.
Some college officials have accepted bribes to allow Middle Eastern “students” passes to the top of the list.
The State Dept needs to stop this ASAP and should have done so on 9/12/01.
So the article says the Egyptians *are* going to visit these two knuckleheads. And the article says “Washington” denied them access.
Which is it? Thanks.
It’s just crazy, going to a foreign county and getting caught with explosive material in the trunk of you car. Explosive material is explosive material, no imagination required.
Nothing unusual about consular officers visiting them while in prison. The 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations Article 36 Section 1.C states:
Consular officers shall have the right to visit a national of the sending State who is in prison,custody or detention, to converse and correspond with him and to arrange for his legal representation. They shall also have the right to visit any national of the sending State who is in prison, custody or detention in their district in pursuance of a judgement. Nevertheless, consular officers shall refrain from taking action on behalf of a national who is in prison, custody or detention if he expressly opposes such action.
Of course, there is nothing they can actually do to get them out under the convention. And it sounds like they’re toast in any case, but this is typical consular procedure.
Ah kemosabe Bear, I was thinking the same, I imagine it’s still in limbo and more to follow.
I was arrested in Laos a few years ago.
Three times a rep from the US embassy was allowed to see me. The meetings were tightly controled. All meetings had Lao government people present at all times. I was not allowed to give the rep anything nor was he allowed to give me anything without it being inspected by the Lao officials. It won’t be like a lawyer privileged meeting. (I wasn’t there on a drug charge)
No word from our folks yet, but the Arab Republic of Egypt is reporting this:
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Arab Republic of Egypt
I wonder what would happen to an American Citizen who, while in Egypt, was stopped by their police / security forces, and discovered to have explosives in their trunk?????
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…..
Whelp, kiss yer butts good bye, you two. Yer hosed.
Um….that ‘banned substance’ is called explosive materials….
Who writes their press releases – someone from the NYT?
Why are these people living in America?
,
Tuesday is the 4th, 2007 lol.
Open borders.
Teddy drove them over that bridge where he trolls.
Maybe it’s just me, but I believe that these really ARE the choices open to Foreign National if they are found guilty of what these guys are accused of. No?
I know the father is upset. He should be. His son is accused of the most cowardly of crimes – IED ambushes.
And if his son if found guilty, then the whole family should also be investigated to a fare thee well. Some kids do, truly, wander from the family’s values – but most don’t…
This isn’t the only Egyptian export problem. The crossing from Egypt into Gaza, the Egyptians are supposedly controlling, has been used for smuggling arms across the border. I don’t know, what is an Egyptians idea of Security?
I have traveled all over this world of ours, and I would never, ever not carry my passport with me … that is your only true form of identification when you are in another country …
Also, I don’t understand why we can’t keep track of these “students” … when my kids were in college in order to keep them on my insurance I had to respond to a letter from the health insurance company every semester with a form completed , signed and notarized by the school administration verifying they were still enrolled full-time … failure to do so would have resulted in the loss of my kids health insurance …
so why shouldn’t these foreign students have to do the same with a government form completed by the school verifying they are attending classes and still enrolled for another semester??? …
as for getting caught with explosives, drugs, or doing anything else deemed illegal in a foreign country … good luck … you will need it …
I believe there’s a phrase called “going dark”.
I think the Egyptian government will be primarily interested with who these proto-terrorists hung out with in Egypt.
It depends on what religion he/she is . . . if a muslim they would be given directions on getting into Israel, if non-muslim, prison without benefit of an attorney.
I love how explosives weren’t mentioned in the Egyptian press, as if they were detained for something relatively benign.
Here in South Carolina, these two are getting a fair amount of favorable coverage. Everything the father says to blame the feds and the local police is printed in the Charleston Post and Courier without question. These poor students are just poor, misunderstood victims.
I suspect that soon the state charges will be dropped and they will be transferred to federal custody, probably somewhere in florida.
The sooner these two are moved out of here, the sooner the feds can get to work on that Tampa hotbed of terrorism, the USF campus. The area within 10 miles of the campus reminds me of the middle east without sand.
Stop the student visa program NOW!!! Stop all visas now until we can figure out to identify our enemy.
Here’s a sample of what I mean.
Samir Megahed said his son is no terrorist. “If he was a white man and not from the Middle East, I’m sorry, he would not be here today.”
Source: Charleston Post and Courier Sunday 9/2/2007
And then there’s this from earlier in the same article.
The father’s eyes were moist. “It’s killing me,” he said, quietly. “It’s my son.”
The race card and tears in the same article. It must be so hard on these poor, poor terrorists, (oops typo, I meant tourists) who only had explosives in their trunk which they obviously bought at Walmart right in the “Explosive” section or since it was only a small amount, maybe they got it at the checkout counter.
Well…that’s not exactly an untrue statement. John Walker Lindh and Adam Gahdan are atypical. Sociopathic American boys don’t normally take up jihad. They find other ways to act out.
And if they’re caught before they act out, no one cuts them a break for their skin color. There are three white boys serving time for a planned school bombing in Green Bay, WI; there’s a white kid from Wauwautosa serving time for last year’s fake NFL stadium bombing threat; I’m sure there are more in other states.
Let’s not forget, albeit the planned attack actually occurred, the example of Red White & Blue American born and bred Timothy McVeigh.
White American – sentenced to death.
Now, if he’d be caught before the attack, is this father saying he’d have been released because he was white?
Gimme a break.
Hang’em on a tall oak tree.
#28 Amen!!!
However, if they see the evidence, and go “whoops, sorry. America, prosecute away”, then I’ll actually have some measure of respect for the Egyptian Govt.
I mean, I fully understand their position of looking after their people. We do it to.
But their statement of “as long as they respect the laws of the country where they live” gives them wiggle room to walk away saying “nothing we could do, it’s their screw up”.
What will really shock you nice folks is getting caught with a Bible in your car in a Muslim country.
Timothy McVeigh killed my cousin and injured a niece and a nephew who to this day have mental problems as a result … the government could have saved a lot of time and money by turning him loose at a news conference and telling everyone in Oklahoma which direction he went … he would have never made it to the state line and as in that famous song “Rainy Night in Georgia” … that’s one body that would never be found …
These guys seem to think just because they didn’t manage to actually set off a bomb or other activity that they hadn’t yet committed a crime and should go free .. wrong … and I don’t think the Egyptian government will be in much of a position to oppose whatever happens to them if the case is as strong as we are being led to believe … maybe we’ll get really lucky and they will give up more of their ilk in an attempt to save their own skins …
Oh, great, the race card. Boy, the grievance mongers in this country have taught these people every trick in the book… and they learn quick too.
I’ve got news for you. If you get caught with explosives in your trunk in any state (unless you are placarded, permitted, and have a darn good reason for having them) — I don’t care what color or nationality you are — your going to jail… and rightfully so.
If convicted, I hope they bury these two under the jail.
Jim C
Holy Jihad! Could Egypt possibly be facilitating enemy combatants in the US? Could Egypt be our enemy?
No, not Egypt… They’re our friends, just like Saudi Arabia.
/sarcasm