TAMPA: Two Egyptian students at a south Florida university were indicted Friday on federal explosives charges, but prosecutors would not say whether the men planned to carry out an attack or hurt anyone.
Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, 24, an engineering graduate student and teaching assistant at the Tampa-based University of South Florida, and engineering student Youssef Samir Megahed, 21, have been held in South Carolina since Aug. 4 when they were stopped for speeding and authorities found explosives in the trunk of their car.
They were indicted by a grand jury in Tampa on charges of carrying explosive materials across state lines. Mohamed also faces terrorism-related charges for teaching and demonstrating how to use the explosives.
Steve Cole, a spokesman for federal prosecutors in Tampa, declined to talk about what the men may have been planning, if anything.
We expect more details may come out in their initial appearance, which will likely take place next week in Charleston, (South Carolina), but we are making no further comment, Cole said.
The two men were stopped with pipe bombs in their car in Goose Creek, South Carolina, near a Navy base where enemy combatants have been held. They were held on state charges while the FBI continued to investigate whether there was a terrorism link.
Mohamed was charged with distributing information relating to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction, which is a terrorism-related statute, a Justice Department official said. However, prosecutors said weapons of mass destruction were not an element in the case.
The crime carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.
He and Megahed both face charges of transporting explosives in interstate commerce without permits, which carries a 10-year prison penalty.
Megahed s defense attorney, Andy Savage, said federal prosecutors have not told him anything about what law enforcement has discovered about the men.
But he was not surprised they were indicted.
When they find somebody who is in that profile of a suspected terrorist based on, in this case, age, ethnic origin and name, then they do everything they can to detain them for as long as they can to investigate them as thoroughly as they can before they re released, he said.
In South Carolina, where Mohamed and Megahed have been held in the Berkeley County jail, US Attorney Reginald I. Lloyd praised state and federal authorities for cooperating in the four-week investigation that initially did not look like a terrorism case.
I applaud the quick action of the law enforcement officials involved in today s indictment, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said in a statement. The local, state and federal partnership prevented a potential danger, possibly saving the lives of countless Americans.
Since the arrest, authorities sought to determine whether Mohamed and Megahed were fledgling terrorists or merely college students headed to the beach with devices made from fireworks they bought at Wal-Mart in their car, as they claimed. The local sheriff in South Carolina said the explosives were other than fireworks.
The charges follow several searches in Tampa, including of a storage facility and a park where the explosives might have been tested, authorities said.
USF spokesman Ken Gullette declined to comment on the indictments, but he noted that the men were in the country legally on student visas, which means they had gotten the proper clearances from the US Department of Homeland Security.
We re educators, not investigators, Gullette said. We assume a student who comes to us has cleared checks and can be admitted.
The men have been suspended from the university and their future there is unclear, he said.
The indictments are another public relations hit for USF, which is where professor Sami Al-Arian was working when he was indicted on charges of raising money for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has been branded a terrorist organization by the US government.
A six-month trial in 2005 ended in an acquittal on some counts and a hung jury on others. Before prosecutors could retry him, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid the group in a nonviolent activity. He agreed to be deported when he finishes his prison sentence.
Gullette said Al-Arian s prosecution and the arrests of the students are isolated incidents that cast USF in an unfairly negative light.
In any location when you gather this many people you re going to have people who do something wrong, he said. I think the university is victimized when things like this happen.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group that has maintained the men were innocent, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. -Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington contributed to this report. Associated Press
