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Mohamed Planned To Cause Harm, Prosecutor Writes

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 5, 2008

TAMPA - Ahmed Mohamed came to the United States to gather "information about explosives and acquiring components in this country to construct explosives to cause harm within this country," a federal prosecutor asserts in a newly filed court document.

Mohamed, an Egyptian student in the United States to attend the University of South Florida, is scheduled to be sentenced Friday after pleading guilty to providing material support to terrorists by making and posting on the Web site You Tube a video in which he shows how to use a remote-controlled device to detonate a bomb.

Mohamed was arrested, along with his friend, Youseff Megahed, last year in South Carolina after deputies there said they found explosives in the trunk of their car. Megahed is still awaiting trial on charges of illegally transporting explosives.

The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hoffer, argues in a sentencing memorandum filed in Mohamed's case that Megahed, a legal, permanent resident of the United States, was a "front man" who was to help Mohamed acquire firearms. The memo was submitted to U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday.

Hoffer argues that Mohamed was "no mere neophyte or 'arm-chair' supporter of violent jihad. He had taken steps in July 2007 to teach others how to set off remote-controlled detonations from a distance; he had engaged in extensive personal research on his laptop computer and had, in fact, manufactured on his own quantities of a potassium nitrate explosive mixture; he had purchased sulfur and other products which would be useful in the manufacture of black powder and, potentially, acetone peroxide; and he had sought to possess firearms unlawfully and attempted to buy them, with the apparent aim to train in their use.

"The defendant did all of these things, and others, with the background of an educated post-graduate student immersed in the religious ideology and literature of jihad and armed struggle in the Middle East. He demonstrated that he had both the knowledge and education to use the research he had been doing in explosives to manufacture some of the deadly compounds that he studied."

Hoffer discloses in the memorandum that when Mohamed applied to enter the United States, he acknowledged on his visa application that he had been previously "arrested or convicted" of an "offense or crime." He told the court probation office he was arrested in 2003 in Egypt and was held in custody there for more than four months. "He had previously insisted in interviews with FBI agents in South Carolina in August 2007 that he had been a political detainee," Hoffer writes.

Hoffer says there is no more information available about Mohamed's contacts with law enforcement before he came to the United States.

In this country, evidence suggests that Mohamed tried to buy a .22-caliber rifle with a scope and a long magazine from a Wal-Mart but was turned away when he couldn't demonstrate that he had the legal right to purchase a firearm, Hoffer writes.

"During the course of his limited time in the United States, the defendant reflected a virulent anti-American attitude on repeated occasions," Hoffer says. "His landlady has reported that she had heard him make many such statements over the short period of his residence with her in 2007. She has reported that he repeatedly condemned 'stupid Americans' and expressed his dislike of the United States and American law. She characterized him as being an opportunist and as being an individual who always felt that he was intellectually superior to most persons and thus able to deceive them consistently."

He called the United States a "vile nation" when speaking to his parents on Dec. 20, Hoffer writes.

Agents found a 37-line poem on Mohamed's computer that appeared to have been written by Mohamed, Hoffer writes. "The author of the poem extols various figures such as the 'exalted Ossama Bin Laden' and other members of Al Qaeda. … In it, the author of the poem pledged his 'blood,' his 'neck' and 'soul' to his Lord and dreamt of the day that Egypt would lead the world by G-D's canonical law, and by jihad in the cause of G-D," Hoffer writes. (The prosecutor, as a matter of practice, doesn't write out the word "God" as part of his Jewish faith.).

Hoffer writes that "the coldest statement of this defendant and the most telling as to his hatred and disdain for the United States came in a hand-written letter which the defendant sent to a Hillsborough County jail deputy on April 1, 2008. In that letter, which he signed, the defendant 'congratulated' the jail deputy upon the fact that the Pentagon had recently announced the death of more than 4,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East."

Reporter Elaine Silvestrini can be reached at (813) 259-7837.

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