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USF Students Acknowledge Indictment In S.C. Hearing

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By Anthony McCartney, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 6, 2007

Updated: 09/06/2007 12:48 pm

CHARLESTON, S.C. - At a hastily-called hearing this morning, two University of South Florida students appeared for the first time on federal explosives charges.

Youssef Megahed, 21, and Ahmed Mohamed, 24, appeared in mismatched clothes at the U.S. District Courthouse in downtown Charleston shortly before noon. They had been moved this morning from a nearby county jail, and their attorneys were not told when a hearing would be held today until they showed up for a meeting with U.S. attorneys to discuss the case.

The hearing was perfunctory – the students acknowledged they were the people named in an indictment issued by a Tampa grand jury last week.

It was over in a matter of minutes, attorneys Andy Savage and Lionel Lofton said afterward.

Megahed and Mohamed now can be returned to Tampa for their arraignment, which has not been scheduled.

Lofton, who is representing Mohamed, said his client appeared in the clothes he was arrested in – a bathing suit, T-shirt and socks.

Megahed wore a T-shirt, pants and two sandals that were different sizes, said Savage, who is representing him.

Neither attorney knew when his client might be moved to Tampa.

Until this morning, Megahed and Mohamed had been held at a detention center in nearby Berkeley County, where they were arrested Aug. 4, about seven miles from a naval weapons facility.

A search of their car turned up bullets and several pipe bombs, authorities have said.

South Carolina charges against them have been dropped.

Savage said he did not expect any substantive issues to be resolved in South Carolina courts, but rather in Tampa. He said it would be easier to defend Megahed in Tampa, where his family lives and others could be called on to testify about his "reputation for peace."

The meeting came a day after representatives of the Egyptian Embassy in Washington met with Megahed and Mohamed at the jail where they are being held in Berkeley County, S.C. Both men are Egyptian natives.

Savage said the embassy's representatives met with Megahed and Mohamed for roughly four hours. He could not describe much of the content of the conversation because they were speaking Arabic, but the students' demeanors improved after the meeting.

The representatives were "very reassuring to them," Savage said.

Lionel Lofton, an attorney representing Mohamed, said the embassy officials told him that his client had never been arrested in Egypt, contrary to earlier reports.

Lofton said Mohamed was a respected teacher in Egypt and that if he had been arrested, he never would have been allowed to travel to the United States.

In a telephone interview from Cairo, Egypt, this morning, Mohamed's father said his son is innocent.

"Of course he is innocent," Abdellatif Mohamed said. "You can ask anyone in the States. He is a good kid. There is nothing wrong with him."

The elder Mohamed expressed frustration at the international attention focused on his son.

"Everybody knows about it," he said, sighing.

Ahmed Mohamed, he says, has a career goal of returning to Egypt to become a faculty engineer at a local university.

U.S. investigators think Mohamed, a civil engineering student at USF, exchanged information over the Internet about how to miniaturize bombs, said a federal law enforcement official speaking anonymously because the investigation remains secret.

Last week, authorities unsealed a Tampa-based federal grand jury's indictment accusing Mohamed of trying to help terrorists by aiding, teaching and demonstrating the use of an explosive device.

The indictment also charges Mohamed and another USF student, Youssef Megahed, with transporting explosives. Both men are Egyptian citizens - Megahed a permanent, legal U.S. resident and Mohamed visiting on a student visa. A lawyer said Mohamed was arrested in Egypt before coming to the United States.

The vaguely worded and sparse indictment says Mohamed distributed information "by any means" about the manufacture and use of an explosive device.

A Muslim community activist said authorities should disclose more evidence so people can decide the validity of the case.

"We have faith in the American judicial system," said Ahmed Bedier, executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. "So far, we've only heard and read about vague language describing an explosive device but no actual evidence. Until that's displayed, it's going to be unclear what's going on."

Defense attorneys for both students said they are confident their clients will be cleared.

Howard Altman of The Tampa Tribune contributed to this report.

Information from Tribune archives was used in this report. Editor Howard Altman can be reached at (813) 259-7629 or haltman@tampatrib.com.

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