[For your Where's the Fat Lady? file] Three men detained on terrorist suspicions still under investigation

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[Opinions? I know I'm not the only one who thought their peace, love, kumbayah response was weird. If someone had deliberately lied about something I said and gone on national TV to make me look like a serious criminal, I would be immensely pissed and upset. NOBODY is that cool, calm and collected except a liar who wants to be believed. Within my admittedly fairly limited experience, the Muslim men I have known have way too much machismo and pride to let that go by without blowing a gasket. And, by the way, nobody has commented on the fact that Eunice Stoner is a NURSE and apparently has been for a good number of years. Nurses are trained to be very objective and to look for a set of signs to suggest a certain condition. Stereotypes: Muslims are prevaricators as a matter of culture; nurses report on observations. So boil me in oil for racial profiling. The Hungarian is adamant that these guys were testing the response of the authorities to a terrorist tip and also their interrogation methods.]]

Sheriff Hunter said he had new information on the trio before the medical students appeared on Larry King Live

Tuesday, September 17, 2002

By MIREIDY FERNANDEZ, mmfernandez@naplesnews.com

Just hours before the three men who were detained in Collier County on suspicion of carrying explosives appeared on CNN on Monday night, Sheriff Don Hunter said he had new information on the trio, whose alleged joking comments about a terrorist plot ignited fears across America last week.

"We believe the information (in this case) is not over because of other uncorroborated information we have at the moment," Hunter said.

The sheriff declined to elaborate because the investigation is continuing, but he did point out a discrepancy.

Authorities say Kambiz Butt, Ayman Gheith and Omar Choudhary were pulling a prank when the men made statements at a Georgia restaurant about a Sept. 13 terrorism attack in Miami.

All three men were detained along Alligator Alley for 17 hours between Thursday and Friday but were released after authorities learned the men had made the comments in jest.

On Monday night, they appeared on CNN's "Larry King Live'' and denied they ever made any statements with regard to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or future terrorist strikes against Americans.

"What hurt me the most is they said it was a hoax," Gheith told King. "We didn't say anything about 9-11, 9-13 or September or anything like that."

What authorities said turned out to be a likely hoax Friday prompted the temporary closure of portions of Interstate 75 and brought law enforcement officers from 20 local, state and federal agencies to assist. Officers used a robotic bomb detector to search the two cars the men were aboard and led a bomb-detecting dog to sniff their belongings.

E.J. Picolo, regional director with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said Monday it was too early to determine whether the men will be charged with a crime. After watching the King interview, Picolo said he couldn't comment about specifics of the investigation such as whether the men's account on live television concur with statements they made to police Friday.

"Our job is to investigate the situation," Picolo said. "We're going to report the facts as we find them and we'll go from there."

From the outset of last week's high-profile episode, Hunter and Picolo both said the men were uncooperative with authorities while they were interviewed.

"They weren't rude but they weren't fully cooperative," Picolo said.

Hunter said two of the men refused to answer questions, while the third would answer in the form of a question and "fished for information." Hunter declined to be specific.

Although no explosives or traces of bomb materials were found in either car, at a press briefing Monday, Hunter addressed a discrepancy.

A bomb-detecting dog alerted law enforcement there was some kind of bomb-making pattern in both cars, although authorities did not find any such materials.

"The dog alerts to a particular scent, picture or pattern . . . the dog doesn't make mistakes," Hunter said. "One theory may be that there were materials in those vehicles at some point that caused the scent."

Choosing his words carefully, Hunter told media representatives that he wasn't suggesting the three men were transporting explosives.

The sheriff, however, raised a number of questions he wants answered.

"I would want to know whether they were in the vehicles at the time" when any bomb-making materials were present, Hunter said. "We need to be able to explain why the dog alert happened and why the searches happened."

Hunter declined to divulge what new information he has received pertaining to the three men, all of whom are of Middle Eastern descent. The men are medical students who said they were on their way to Larkin Community Hospital in Miami to begin internships.

Hunter said he believes restaurant patron Eunice Stone of Calhoun, Ga., was telling the truth when she contacted authorities Thursday after she said she overheard the three men saying that Americans "mourned 9-11 and they are going to mourn again on 9-13."

Stone, who sat next to the men in a booth at a Shoney's restaurant, said she notified authorities because she feared the men were planning some sort of terrorist attack on Miami.

"That would lead one to believe that we're going to be attacked," Hunter said. "My professional opinion at the moment is that I believe Eunice Stone. She told the truth and did her civic duty and she should be commended."

Stone's attorney, Michael Prieto, also appeared Monday on "Larry King Live'' and said his client had no reason to fabricate a story about what she is certain she heard the Muslim men say inside the restaurant.

Stone was hospitalized with chest pains Monday, her attorney said.

An investigation is under way surrounding the comments the men made in Georgia and their bizarre behavior in Collier County that led deputies to make a traffic stop and issue a traffic ticket to one of the drivers who they say drove past a $1.50 tollbooth on Alligator Alley late Thursday without paying. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation issued a be-on-the-lookout bulletin, which Collier sheriff's deputies responded to when they stopped both cars, Hunter said.

The men say they never blew past the tollbooth, but Hunter said he has a sworn affidavit from the tollbooth operator stating that one of the cars drove through without paying. He also said his agency was in the process of obtaining a copy of a videotape that he said will show the car driving through.

Picolo, with FDLE, said the various agencies that assisted have yet to tally how much the entire operation cost — but assured that it wasn't going to be cheap.

"It was a very expensive proposition to respond in the manner that we did," Picolo said. "But given the information and circumstances, we had no other recourse but to respond at that level."



-- Anonymous, September 17, 2002

Answers

Fla. Scare Raises Questions on Tips

Sep 16, 6:05 PM (ET), By DAVID CRARY

First, a high-profile false alarm in Florida; then the arrest of five terror suspects in western New York. Together, the two events raise questions about how zealous Americans should be as tipsters in the homefront war on terrorism.

"I don't know if anyone has the perfect answer," said Khalid Qazi, president of the American Muslim Council of Western New York, wondering how to strike a balance between vigilance and paranoia.

After a daylong drama on the south Florida highway known as Alligator Alley, three Muslim medical students were released Friday without charges. They had been detained based on the suspicions of a woman who overheard parts of their conversation at a Shoney's restaurant in Georgia.

Authorities commended the woman, Eunice Stone, for calling police. Even Muslim leaders, while depicting the incident as racial profiling, stopped short of saying Stone acted maliciously.

"I'm sure she believes she really heard some threats," Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Monday. [She didn't say she heard threats, she said it sounded like. Big difference.]

"But there's a problem when you basically deputize everyone in America. [Citizens have always been deputized to protect the country.] Does a person reading the Koran in the airport, or a man wearing a skullcap, constitute suspicious activity? Where does it leave us?"

Law enforcement authorities, from the federal level on down, have encouraged the public to report any suspicious activity since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and have not complained about false alarms.

"Any time a citizen feels that they have witnessed something suspicious, we want them to notify the appropriate authorities," said Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo. "Citizen vigilance is an essential part of the fight against terrorism here at home."

Yet one of the department's initiatives for expanding public vigilance - Operation TIPS - has run into widespread opposition, from both conservatives and liberals. Even the U.S. Postal Service shunned the program, in which truckers, train conductors, utility employees and others were supposed to report systematically on suspicious activities. [Locally, utility workers are supposed to keep an eye and ear out for suspicious activity for the war on drugs.]

A proposal for a scaled-back TIPS program remains pending. Among its foes is the American Civil Liberties Union, which says TIPS would "recruit 1 million volunteers to act as spies and informants against their neighbors." [They do that anyway, regardless of what the government wants. LOL]

The ACLU's executive director, Anthony Romero, said utility workers and truckers would be more prone to fall for hoaxes or to engage in racial profiling than law enforcement officers. [So? There is no law that says the citizen cannot use racial profiling.]

"We will quickly spiral down into anarchy if we begin to ask ordinary citizens to play the role that only trained authorities should play," Romero said. [Off the planet! Now!]

In contrast to the Florida false alarm, authorities claim a substantive breakthrough in Lackawanna, N.Y., with the arrest of five men of Yemeni descent who allegedly were trained in Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network. A sixth suspect was arrested in Bahrain.

"The FBI solves a great number of its cases through public cooperation," said Paul Moskal, a bureau spokesman in Buffalo, N.Y.

"Sometimes there is fabrication, reports from people who are not clear thinking or have mental illness. But my suggestion, if someone thinks something is amiss, is always to err on the side of caution and contact police."

Federal officials have credited Muslim-Americans in western New York with helping them crack the suspected cell, but have not specified how they assisted. [Oh, so it's okay when they do it to their own, but when the rest of us do it we be bad?]

"The Muslim community is perhaps even more vigilant than the average American - they will do their patriotic duty," Qazi said.

"But it is a delicate balance. There is a real need to eradicate any operatives, but on the other hand, it has become very difficult for these communities to enjoy the civil liberties they enjoyed in the past. There's almost paranoia about anyone doing anything unusual."

Regarding the Florida incident, Qazi said, "The impact is very chilling - Muslim-Americans can't even talk and joke in a restaurant." [We must realize that it isn't just Muslim-Americans, nobody should talk and joke in a restaurant. They might be considered to be having too good a time during these trying times we are living in.]

Hooper urged Americans to use good judgment in deciding whether to file a report with police.

"If you heard someone saying, 'We're going to bomb this place tonight,' you should report it," he said. "But you have to keep from reacting based on prejudice and stereotype; you need to react based on real things."

In Georgia, Eunice Stone was hospitalized Monday with chest pains which her attorney blamed on stress. Earlier, she had defended her actions and stood by her account that the Muslim medical students made suspicious remarks about the terrorist attacks.

The students deny saying anything provocative, either serious threats or joking references to the attacks.

Romero said the case raised questions about how Americans should react to overheard remarks that might be considered offensive.

"Satire, humor, jokes are part of our everyday lives," he said. "We shouldn't be afraid that what we say might trigger a reaction from law enforcement." [Be afraid. Be very afraid. Safer that way.]

---

On the Net:

Justice Department:http://www.usdoj.gov

ACLU:http://www.aclu.org/action/tips107.html

[This article was here: http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20020916/D7M35B480.html



-- Anonymous, September 17, 2002


I think the Hungarian is a smart lady.

-- Anonymous, September 17, 2002

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