The FBI today said it has no reason to suspect terrorism ties for three Palestinian-American men arrested in Michigan and charged with "collecting or providing materials for terrorist acts and surveillance of a vulnerable target for terrorist purposes." The men were stopped by authorities after buying 80 pre-paid cellphones at a Wal-Mart. Their van contained nearly a thousand such phones, and the men said they planned to re-sell them at profit.
Nearby, in Ohio, a prosecutor today said he lacked evidence to present felony terrorism charges against two more Arab-American men arrested in a similar incident last week over bulk cellphone buys. Link to AP story, via MSNBC (Thanks, Malik Mitchell).
Today's Detroit Free Press includes an interesting article on the cottage industry of buying and re-selling prepaid mobile phones — apparently quite popular in Arab-American communities. Snip:
In Michigan, "you can talk to almost any family in the Arab-American community, and they all have some relative in the cell phone business," said Warren David, a Lebanese American from Northville. If police knew that, perhaps five Arab Americans would not have been arrested last week on terrorism charges after they bought hundreds of cell phones, said David, who recently sold his cell phone business to an Iraqi American.
"If they understood us a little more, they might not jump the gun so quickly," he said.
In Ohio on Tuesday, a store employee called police after two 20-year-old Arab-American men from Dearborn bought a large number of cell phones at a Wal-Mart. The same thing happened Friday in Caro after three Arab-American men bought 80 phones at one store. In the Ohio case, Osama Abulhassan and Ali Houssaiky were just trying to make money by buying cell phones so they could sell them to a distributor for a profit, family members said.
"The two young men were engaged in a perfectly legal practice based on the most fundamental principles of our free market economy," the Abulhassan family said in an e-mail.
Link. Let's hope this frees more anti-terror resources for the *real* fight — pounding discount hair gel distributors into submission with the mighty fists of justice.
Previously on BoingBoing:
* Van full of cellphones leads to arrest of 3 on terror charges
Reader comment: KC says,
Caro, MI is only about 1/2 hour from Decker, MI, ( Link ) which is where Terry Nichols' brother's farm was, (known to the world from the Murrah Fed. Bldg. investigation).
In other words, it's pretty rednecky. I'm sure they see Arab-Americans from time to time, because one of the largest communities of people of Middle-Eastern descent outside the Middle East is in Dearborn, only a couple of hours away ( Link, and link ). They just don't see them that often, and my guess is that not everyone up there likes it when they do.
You don't ever read about the Police Chief of Dearborn being involved in things like this.
