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Mohamed Sentenced To 15 Years

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI

esilvestrini@tampatrib.com

Published: December 19, 2008

Updated: 12/19/2008 12:12 am

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

For that, Mohamed, 27, 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 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.
Defense attorneys portrayed Mohamed as leading an otherwise exemplary life. His background was so clean, said lawyer Linda Moreno, that he worked for U.S. companies in Cairo, including Halliburton.

"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 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 United States 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.

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 from Mohamed's computer and debit card records shows he viewed Web sites with information about making explosives and then bought the ingredients the sites mentioned.

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.

The defense asked for an eight-year sentence, but the judge said he concluded Mohamed was a true adherent of his extreme beliefs.

Such a view, he said, is not changeable through rehabilitation.

News Channel 8 reporter Krista Klaus contributed to this report.

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