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Former USF Student Gets 15 Years For Aiding Terrorists

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 18, 2008

Updated: 12/18/2008 07:12 pm

TAMPA - The YouTube video was on the Internet only a few days but was viewed nearly 800 times before the Web site operators saw it and took it down, prosecutors said.

"There's no way to know how far it went, to whom and what they did with it," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hoffer.

In the video, Ahmed Mohamed, then a student at the University of South Florida, showed how to modify a plastic toy car so it could be used to remotely set off a bomb. The idea, Mohamed has admitted, was to target "infidels," including American troops overseas, without "martyrs" having to sacrifice their lives.

For that, Mohamed was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in federal prison, the maximum allowed under the law for the charge he pleaded guilty to, providing material support to terrorists.

The video was shown in court Thursday, its first public display since Mohamed was arrested Aug. 4, 2007, in South Carolina, along with fellow student, Youssef Megahed, after deputies found what prosecutors say was explosive materials in the trunk of their car. Megahed, who has not been implicated in the Youtube video, is awaiting trial on charges of transporting explosives.

Mohamed's attorneys argued there was no evidence that anyone ever viewed the video and took action as a result, that there were no identified victims of this crime.

"I admit that the video was something that was not a wise idea," Mohamed said in a statement read by his attorney, Lyann Goudie, before he was sentenced. "I do apologize because I never intended to harm anybody in particular…I am convinced that I have learned a lesson …I am no more than a college guy."

Mohamed, 27, asked U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday to show leniency, to allow him to go on to lead a good life and one day have children.

Mohamed, who is from Egypt, hung his head low as Merryday sentenced him.

"I hear no contrition that I find convincing," the judge said.

"His objective was to cause others to have the knowledge needed to do damage including death to persons in the service of the United States," the judge said.

Defense attorneys portrayed Mohamed as leading an otherwise exemplary life. His background was so clean, said lawyer Linda Moreno, that he worked for American companies in Cairo, including Haliburton.

"While it's a terrible video, and it's a horrible video, in the context of what's happening in the world and in the context of what's happening in the Middle East, I can ask the court to consider it from that point of view," Moreno said.

Mohamed used USF equipment at night, when no one else was around, to upload the video onto the Web site, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Monk, who said Mohamed "embraces a violent and extreme ideology" and "has a particular dislike of Americans."

Monk said Mohamed has said, "Americans are pigs. Americans are easy to deceive. Americans are scum."

Monk said Mohamed wrote a poem about a month after he entered the U.S. on a student visa on Jan. 1, 2007. In the poem, Mohamed praised terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden.

In a hearing that spanned nearly the entire court day, Monk and Hoffer presented evidence depicting Mohamed as a growing threat.

Mohamed told an FBI agent, "You don't understand, you have made me a hero." He also said, "Americans are more stupid than pigs, and you cannot deny this."

According to Monk, Mohamed said, "It is the wish of every Muslim to die … at the hands of the invaders, and he will get credit for this when he dies."

Monk said evidence gained from Mohamed's computer and debit card records shows he viewed Web sites with information about making explosives and then purchased the ingredients mentioned on the sites.

On June 23, 2007, for example, Mohamed or someone using his computer, visited a "United Nuclear" Web site and clicked on a page about the manufacture of black powder, Monk said. Two days later, Mohamed's debit card was used to purchase sulpher, charcoal and stump remover, which has as its primary ingredient potassium nitrate, ingredients used to make explosive black powder.

On July 30, someone used his computer to visit a Web site with information about high order explosives, showing one of the chemicals used is the primary component in nail polish remover, Monk said. The next day, Mohamed's credit card was used to purchase hydrogen peroxide and nail polish remover from Home Depot.

Prosecutors said the instructions Mohamed gave on the YouTube video were accurate. Mohamed's version of modifying a toy for use in exploding bombs remotely would work.

They showed another video made by the FBI with three experiments. The first two showed how the remote-controlled toy used by Mohamed could set off a small explosion. The third used a detonator employed by professionals, with the operator at a much further distance. They also used ammonium nitrate with fuel oxidizer to blow up a van. Hoffer said that substance is a "high explosive" researched by someone using Mohamed's computer.

Hoffer said that while there was no evidence Mohamed had the professional detonator, he did buy walkie talkies, which can be converted to trigger explosions remotely from great distances. The judge described the video of that explosion as "spectacular, but not particularly pertinent."

Monk read from letters Mohamed wrote from jail to his parents and another person where he talked about the Muslim religion taking over the world.

The defense asked for an eight-year sentence, saying Mohamed has been mistreated while in the Falkenberg Road Jail awaiting disposition of his case. They said he was tortured in Egypt when he was imprisoned for four months without charges for donating money to the Red Crescent.

Goudie appealed to the judge's sense of fairness. The defense attorney said her son is in the military and served two tours of duty in Iraq, during the initial invasion in 2003 and then in 2005 until September 2006.

She said she told her son before he went, "Remember when you're putting on that uniform that you're representing the United States of America." She said she urged him not to "ever think it's proper to stoop down to anybody else's level. Remember that you're an American and that you're fair and you're just."

The judge said it appears the YouTube video was "directed at simple people, either young people or people with a much lower aptitude than he… to cause others to do damage to others, including death to persons serving in the United States military.''

Merryday said he considered whether the video was "some goofy course of action entered into whimsically by a graduate student at the University of South Florida who is really a harmless fellow with an intellectual interest in or a hobby of explosives or who is play acting himself as having an interest in jihad … or on the other hand, is this someone who had indelibly inscribed in his consciousness some commitment to exact vengeance or visit vengeance on others by the very will and instruction of God?"

The judge concluded Mohamed was a true adherent of his extreme religious beliefs.

Such a view, he said, is not changeable through rehabilitation. Trying to persuade someone to change that viewpoint wouldn't be considered rehabilitative, the judge said. "It would be apostasy."

News Channel 8 reporter Krista Klaus contributed to this report.

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