The FBI says allegations against two Egyptian men accused of carrying pipe bombs in the trunk of a car may not be true.
The agency’s Tampa, Fla., office issued a rare press release urging the public to withhold judgment of Youssef Megahed and Ahmed Mohamed until it completes its investigation.
“The FBI would like to remind everyone that this is an ongoing investigation and there is the possibility that the publicly reported allegations involving the students may be proven false,” the release states.
Berkeley County sheriff’s investigators charged Megahed, 21, and Mohamed, either 24 or 26, with possession of explosives on Aug. 6 after the investigators found what they said were pipe bombs in the trunk of Megahed’s car after Megahed was stopped for speeding on the evening of Aug. 4.
The FBI’s statement from late Wednesday was news to Berkeley County sheriff’s Capt. Rick Ollic, who said Thursday that he hadn’t heard about it until a reporter brought it up. He said the Sheriff’s Office made the proper charges and referred any other questions to the FBI’s Tampa office.
“As far as I know, nothing is going to change,” he said. “We will continue our path toward the prosecution of these individuals.”
Read it all from the front page of the local newspaper, another cautionary tale about being careful not to rush to judgment.
Yet, as the six imans on the airplane have shown, this could have been a trial run or an effort to lull security/scrutiny into laxity. Enough false alarms and the real deal can slip through (the boy who cried ‘wolf’).
They may not have had anything more than fireworks, but their behavior hinted at something more sinsiter. That also needs to be taken into consideration.
I’m sure those trained police officers couldn’t tell the difference between pipe bombs and a box of cigars. No, if they weren’t pipe bombs, they were the props for a set-up.