Indicted USF Student has Terror Past in Egypt :: Articles by IPT :: The Investigative Project on Terrorism

On of Florida's finest may have thwarted a terrorist attack.

Two Egyptian students enrolled at the University of South Florida have been indicted for carrying explosive materials across states lines. One of the defendants also is charged with teaching the other how to use them for violent reasons.

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.

This wasn't a couple of kids acting up and playing with minor explosives:

The local sheriff in South Carolina said the explosives were "other than fireworks."

Now I don't know about you, but I went through a phase of chemistry, physics, and math and loved playing with explosives.  Nothing too outlandish, but stuff that in large quantities can blow up a small tree or a large pumpkin.

My chemistry teacher at the time noticed it and took me under his wing and I learned a great deal about how things worked and how things didn't work.  He taught me how to respect chemicals and explosives and things of that nature and through it all, he never thought for a minute that I had any nefarious intentions.  He knew it was all just "that was cool" going through my bloodstream, so he took it upon himself to show me the larger world of explosives an chemistry (which lead me to design a weapon for the first Gulf War that is currently being used now in military applications)

My point is that these two guys weren't up to a simple "that was cool" thing.  They were arrested once for terrorism related charges, and now they're being arrested again.  However, this time, they had anti-American literature with them, so who knows what they might have been planning, but it surely wouldn't have been good for anyone involved.

 

Travis

travis@rightwinglunatic.com