The Associated Press reports that the two men will face an additional charge for committing acts supporting terrorism. Meanwhile, the Columbus Dispatch provides more information on their arrest and their defense:
The men were stopped while driving for failure to signal a turn Tuesday after a clerk at a RadioShack called deputies to report the two acting suspiciously while buying three disposable, prepaid TracFones. The men bought six more phones from a Wal-Mart at the same strip mall near I-77.
Inside the car, deputies found nearly $11,000 in cash, a dozen cell phones, instructions on accessing and altering computerized passenger and baggage information from Royal Jordanian Airlines, and some airline-flight manifests.
Assistant Prosecutor Susan Vessels accused the men of "very serious crimes" in detailing the suspicious items found in their car and their admission that they bought 600 cell phones in the last month and were after another 300 on a trip south from Dearborn, Mich.
Attorneys for the two men said authorities are overreacting to a legal purchase of phones by two men who are working for a legitimate businessman. He resells the cheap phones at a profit and has been cleared of any terrorism links by the FBI, the attorneys said.
Agent Dawn Clenney, spokeswoman for the FBI in Detroit, could not confirm what the lawyers said. The Marietta case is a matter for Ohio lawenforcement agencies, she said.
The airline-related documents found in the car owned by Houssaiky’s mother belong to her, the men’s attorneys said. She works for a company that provides ground support for Royal Jordanian Airlines and others at the Detroit airport, they said.
The attorneys suggested the men were stopped and arrested as targets of racial profiling.
UPDATE: Police are looking into more mass cell phone purchases here and here.
Related Posts (on one page):
- No Charges for Pair Arrested in Ohio:
- Update on Ohio Arrests:
- Another Terror Plot Foiled?
- The Foiled Plots:
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Could also have been :Some Middle-Easterners were here and they bought an unusual amount of cellphones at full retail price. Said they wanted to resell them.....
Wonder if they played soccer and cricket like the English held terror suspects?
If so, then it's about time.
Darkies? Darkies?
Dude, people don't talk like that in real life, especially when reporting something to the police (when you presumably don't want to sound like a nut).
Perhaps you should do some more thinking and less fantasy-redneck-bashing.
One of the biggest struggles the criminal justice system will have over the next decade is what to do about the fact that most Muslims are not terrorists but most terrorists are Muslims.
The reception and sound quality is poor but I don't care, only use it to call my wife and tell her I'm coming back from the shooting-range or dirt-bike riding, and since she hates phones too, I'm usually calling our answering machine.
I don't see how anybody could make money off them legitimately, even if you send them back to Pakistan. Maybe they're easy to hack and re-program the EPROM or something?
No, the struggle will be that not all Muslims are Arabs and not all Arabs are Muslims. We have people who want to rely on racial profiling, ignoring that a significant numbers of Arabs aren't even Muslims and are unlikely to be working for Osama or any other Muslim-oriented terrorist organizations.
Reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons where Bart wanders into a mob hangout called "The Legitimate Businessman's Social Club."
Amen to that. Most of the current batch in England are of Pakistani descent. Also, do the names Reed, Padilla, and Lind ring a bell? All non Arab converts seeking peace in Islam.
I wonder if its easy to convert into bomb triggering devices as in the current terror plot from England?
Like who? I seriously doubt there is anyone that would suggest we only look at Arab Muslims as potential terrorists to the exclusion of all others. I think what you're more likely to find is a sentiment that we shold spend more time looking at Arab Muslims, male, ages 18-44, then we should spend looking at 80 year old grandmothers.
And these “legitimate businessmen” apparently make it a habit to travel with $11,000 in cash and instructions on how to “access[] and alter[] computerized passenger and baggage information from Royal Jordanian Airlines.”
Let's not jumpt to conclusions. I mean, I have some odd things in my car. although not $11K in cash,of course. Or a dozen cell phones. Or instructions for altering baggage and passenger information on comercial airliners.
But I do have some old ankle-weights in the trunk. So this could have happened to me.
We should execute them before some smart-mouthed lawyer comes up with a way to get them out of jail.
We are at war, after all.
The airline-related documents found in the car owned by Houssaiky’s mother belong to her, the men’s attorneys said. She works for a company that provides ground support for Royal Jordanian Airlines and others at the Detroit airport, they said.
The cellphones are part of this reselling 'business' that has apparently already been investigated by the FBI and cleared. So, we have $11,000 in cash, which is pretty weird. Perhaps they smuggle coke in the phones? Drug dealing is one of many possible reasons for carrying lots of cash that is NOT terrorism.
So is, e.g., tax evasion.
The brother claimed also that the paperwork belonged to their mother who was training with the Aircraft Service International Group. To believe their story we would have to believe that (a) ASIG allows their employees to take copies of such sensitive information home with them and (b) the mother of someone traveling with $11,000 in cash, 600 cellular phones to be resold “overseas,” and who lied to the police about why they were being purchased just “happened” to leave them in the car with them rather than hanging on to it to use for her training.
Because such a failure to signal is, by itself alone, ticketable, it is apparently quite legal to pull someone over and talk to them on such a basis - and who can blame the cops for seeing a bunch of cell phones in the car, and asking further questions, etc.
I am not saying that I agree with this, but rather, if this sort of thing can be applied on a routine basis, thousands of times a day by the cops in this country, using it to track down terrorists is much more legitimate, IMHO, than when it is routinely used in some cities for "Driving While Black" stops.
Step 1: Purchase Cell Phones
Step 3: Profits
One possible way to "buy phones at retail" in one of the cheapest countries in the world and make money would be to buy the phones for $20, pull the SIMs, unlock the phones, and sell them overseas for $40.
This would work if some TRACphones have SIMs. I know some are GSM phones.
I had $3,000 on me yesterday after I sold a camera lens.
When I go to gun-shows or other auctions, I usually take $10 or 15K with me - alot of people don't take plastic and don't want wire-transfer records leading to them.
And if 10 or 12 cell phones raise eyebrows, I usually take a couple of shotguns and 3 or 4 pistols whenever I drive over to the range.
I am at a loss, though, to imagine how one could use 600 cell phones to commit an act of terrorism. Drop them from a tall building on pedestrians? Telephone people to death? It is plausible that they were intended as triggering mechanisms for a large number of IEDs in Iraq. But that would certainly require a lot of explosives.
Again, we're all speculating. Let's wait for more evidence.
The answer is $10,000. http://www.fincen.gov/forms/fin104_ctr.pdf
Though it can be less if you're really shady.
http://www.fincen.gov/forms/f9022-47_sar-di.pdf
I suppose one could believe that it’s perfectly innocent for two men to travel from State to State with $11,000 cash, who bought 600 cellular phones, who initially lied to the police and later said that they were going to sell them to “some guy” who would sell them “overseas,” and who just happened to have instructions for how to access and alter passenger and baggage information for a Middle Eastern airline with them in the vehicle at the time of the arrest. One could believe that, but I’m not sure if it would qualify as “plausible.”
Even if that is so -- which I'm not qualified to judge -- wouldn't one make even greater profits by buying wholesale?
Google: cell phones set off bombs. Muslims have used cell phones as a detonating device in the past including the Madrid bombings.
Yes I suppose it’s “plausible” if you believe that (a) Aircraft Service International Group as part of its post-9/11 employee training allows them to take home instructions on how to access and alter passenger and baggage information, (b) that an employee brought it home as part of her training but decided to keep it in her car rather then keep with her so she could study it, and (c) didn’t bother to secure it to make sure that unauthorized personnel would not have access to it.
Thorley, your speculations on the procedures used by various airport service groups are just that: speculations. Why are you so eager to rush to judgement? Yes, this could be a terrorist plot, but the combination of the cellphones and the baggage system information makes no sense. If it were a terrorist plot, then obviously they were planning on smuggling something onto aircraft. Yet why would they want to smuggle 600 cellphones onto an aircraft? Perhaps it's just straight economic smuggling -- in which case these guys aren't terrorists. If you want to make the case that they are terrorists, you need to establish what they intended to do once they smuggled 600 cell phones onto an airplane. That's a lot of speculative work when it would be much easier to just give it a few days and wait for more evidence to emerge.
Why "plus"?
Isn't it more likely that (assuming they are legit), they got the $11,000 from reselling the 600 other phones?
Online poker? I hear it's all the rage with the kids these days.
First, there is a means by which hundreds of cellphones could be useful to terrorists: for making nearly untraceable international phone calls. So now I think that plausibility has been established that these guys could have been participating in a terrorist scheme.
Second, however, was this little item:
Task force officers following up a tip in May stopped a vehicle occupied by two men "of Middle Eastern descent" with 500 prepaid cell phones.
"After questioning the men, they were released," Booker said. "There was no law violated."
Looks like much the same thing. The two fellows are due for arraignment on Tuesday. I'm sure we can hold off the lynchmob until then, can't we?
For a real disposable cell phone, check this article (tech-heads will get a real kick out of this)
22 percent of those surveyed said they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbor.
31 percent of respondents said they would feel nervous if they noticed a Muslim man on their airplane flight
18 percent would feel nervous about a Muslim woman flying with them.
49 percent feel that Muslims living in the U.S. are loyal to this country.
34 percent believe American Muslims are sympathetic to the al-Qaida terrorist organization.
40 percent of respondents said they believe Muslims in the U.S. are not respectful of other religions
44 percent said Muslims are too extreme in their religious beliefs.
52 percent believe Muslims are not respectful of women.
39 percent said the U.S. should require Muslims to carry a special ID
57 percent believe Muslims should undergo more intensive security checks at airports.
39 percent said they "have at least some feelings of prejudice against Muslims.
59 percent said they did not, and 2 percent had no opinion.
Opinions are different, however, among Americans who are personally acquainted with a Muslim, the poll disclosed.
For example:
10 percent of those who know a Muslim said they would not want one as a neighbor.
24 percent believe Muslims should carry a special ID – compared to 50 percent among those who don’t know a Muslim.
Are these results MY fault? Are they the fault of other sites like Little Green Footballs or Jihad Watch?
I think it it’s the fault of C.A.I.R and the speeches, rallies and public statements NOT made that are the cause of the feelings shown in this poll. Personally I think the vast majority of Americans want to live well and harmoniously with their American moslem brothers its just that we never see the American moslem community trying to reach out to us. They didn’t attend that rally held in Washington specifically for them (you recall the one I am talking about...it was a flop).
C.A.I.R. will say this poll shows Americans are bigots…BULL! It’s up to American Moslems to prove us wrong.
We want you too, really.
What do you think? Please comment.
-Steve
As for "taking a stand" against Islamofascist terrorism, well, I'd have to agree. But it seemed to me as though they were all to concerned with pursuing the "American Dream" to be too concerned about politics or world affairs, except has to how it might effect their businesses.
Nick
NickM, I don't know whether it's "intelligent", but small businessmen do often deal in cash, even in 5-figure quantities, so I find it not too remarkable if the business owner would hand two trusted employees $12,000 to go buy 600 phones at $20. (Some had been spent already.) Immigrants are more likely to deal in cash than Americans who grew up with our banking and credit systems. And these people weren't just buying from Walmart, but from convenience stores and everywhere else they could find the one brand; these places might have a multitude of different policies concerning credit cards and checks, but every one of them takes cash.
I'm not saying there isn't something going on, but the publicly available information leaves room for reasonable doubt.