We’ve previously written about these so called cell phone terrorists here and here. Well, it appears their ordeal is finally over. All charges have been dropped. I can only hope that someone gets fired over this. Since when is buying in bulk and taking pictures of landmarks illegal?!
A federal judge threw out conspiracy and money laundering charges Tuesday against three Texas men who originally were accused of planning terrorism, saying there wasn’t enough evidence to bring them to trial.
U.S. District Court Magistrate Charles Binder released Louai Othman, 23, his brother Adham Othman, 21, and their cousin Maruan Muhareb, 18, all of Mesquite, Texas, after a preliminary hearing.
The three were arrested Aug. 11 after buying large numbers of prepaid cell phones at a Wal-Mart store in rural Caro, about 80 miles north of Detroit. Michigan charges against the men were thrown out last month.
“I guess their ordeal is done,” said defense lawyer Abed Ayoub of Dearborn, who represents the three men.
Tuscola County authorities said they were alarmed by the hundreds of cell phones they said were found in the men’s van and by images of the Mackinac Bridge on their digital camera.
But the FBI and state police later said there was no imminent threat to the 5-mile-long span linking Michigan’s two peninsulas and no information linking the Othmans and Muhareb to known terrorist groups.
I can’t believe that the prosecutor actually took these guys to a preliminary hearing. Obviously they weren’t doing anything.
Prosecutor == dildo.
I’d like to see your comments if somewhere down the road, this group or another one like them blows something up! I imagine then it will be something like; “Well, they had them in custody and let them go! Why did they do that?” If I had stopped them, I would have thought it was strange they had all these cell phones too!
There is something inherently odd, don’t you think, about buying a product for $10 (just a round number), stripping out useful components (instructions, battery chargers), and then selling it to others for $20 where the customer could buy the same item and the missing parts for the same $10.
Given the popularity of these devices for “trouble makers”, the arrests make perfect sense.
If these guys aren’t US Citizens, they should be at least expelled.
Political Correctness is going to get us all killed….
to Stu Mulne:
but scoring money off gulible/stupid people is one of the most prevalent American business ideas! They should be given citizenship just for figuring that out 😉
xxx
Oh how true it is.
It wont be long before we a arresting people for thought-crimes.
#2: Good point. just to be safe we should put them in Club Gitmo for a few years without representation as enemy combatants! Better safe than sorry. That whole “innocent until proven guilty thing” is kind of quaint, from before 9/11 when everything changed. Besides, they LOOK like terrorists.
Luckily sarcasm isn’t a terrorist tactic.
#3. That durned capitalism. I know, we should keep it safely in the hands of big business.
I think the value added was that these guys were going to unlock the phones. If you’re going to talk about gullible people – why would we buy phones locked to a specific service provider when there is no technical reason for it. Gullible.
#2. If the elite antiterrorist forces of the keystone kops can’t come up with better evidence than a bunch of phones and a postcard of the macinac bridge, I doubt they will be able to catch somebody who is sophisticated enough to only buy a few phones at a time and not carry the pictures of the bridge with them.
[I can see the postcard of the bridge, with an arror pointing to the base of one of the towers: “put bomb here.”]
Bridge walk was Labor Day with many of us Michigander’s and Governor walking the bridge.
Not surprised they were released the day after.