Real threat or fake terror?

Even the FBI says there's no evidence of a bomb plot, but prosecutors in Michigan refuse to set three Arab-Americans free.

By Mark Benjamin

Read more: Politics, News, Michigan, Mark Benjamin

Photo: AP/Carlos Osorio

Civil rights lawyer Nabih Ayad of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's Michigan advisory board

Aug. 21, 2006 | Attorney Nabih Ayad drove two hours north from the Arab-American enclave of Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit, to tiny Caro, Mich., last Wednesday in hopes of springing three of his clients from the Tuscola County jail.

The clients, three young Palestinian-Americans from Texas, had been arrested while driving their van from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart buying cheap cellphones. The county prosecutor had filed state terrorism charges against the trio, believing they were jihadis plotting to blow up the Mackinac Bridge. Though Ayad knew that the terrorism case was already collapsing, and expected his clients would soon be in the clear, he still wanted to get them out of jail on bond in the interim.

When Ayad reached Caro, however, his clients weren't there. Someone at the courthouse told him the men had been taken to Bay City by U.S. marshals. The state case had been dropped, but the men were facing new federal charges. Except they were no longer accused of being terrorists. They were charged with trafficking in cellphones -- a common practice of buying in bulk and reselling that Ayad insists isn't even illegal. "These are B.S. charges," he fumed via his own cellphone on Wednesday as he drove from Caro to Bay City in search of his clients. "We are going to fight them all the way."

Ayad said prosecutors are trying to save face by charging the men with anything they can, now that initial reports of a plot against the bridge have proved dubious. "To us, it's a way of doing damage control," Ayad said. "They want to come up with anything to get themselves out of this hole they are in."

It's possible that the authorities are trying to hold the men, two brothers and a cousin who range in age from 18 to 23, until they're certain they pose no threat. Or, as legal experts have suggested, federal authorities may still believe in a terror plot but, lacking sufficient proof, have opted for another avenue of prosecution.

It's also possible that Adham Othman, Louai Othman and Maruan Muhareb are collateral damage in the war on terror, unlucky enough to have been Arab-Americans driving through a rural county the day after the Heathrow bomb plot was revealed. At first investigated by the feds as potential terrorists, they were then charged under a little-used post-9/11 Michigan terror statute. When that case collapsed for lack of evidence, they then became, to Salon's knowledge, the first people ever federally charged with fraud for the bulk reselling of cellphones. They no longer face 40 years in prison, but they're still looking at jail time for acts that officials in other states deem unworthy of prosecution, and that police in other states had decided -- after detaining the Othmans and Muhareb -- did not even merit arrest. "If their name was Bill," Ayad snapped, "we would not be talking."

On Aug. 10, British authorities announced that they had made 24 arrests in a plot to use liquid explosives to down airliners en route to the United States from London. Stepping off Air Force One in Wisconsin that morning, the news from Britain still fresh, President Bush called the arrests "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists." He warned Americans to be on the alert. "We're still not completely safe, because there are people that still plot and people who want to harm us for what we believe in."

Less than 24 hours later, police in Caro, population 4,000, stopped the three men outside a local Wal-Mart with roughly 1,000 cheap cellphones in their van. It was 2 a.m., and they had just purchased 80 cellphones from the store, raising the suspicion of an employee. Less than a year before, federal law enforcement officials had warned their state and local counterparts to be on the lookout for people buying large numbers of prepaid cellphones, since the phones could be used as detonators. The Caro police arrested the Othmans and Muhareb.

The media pounced on the story once local authorities, led by Tuscola County prosecutor Mark Reene, announced that they suspected the three men of planning to blow up the immense and picturesque Mackinac Bridge, the 5-mile span that separates Lake Michigan and Lake Huron and connects Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas. Breathlessly, newspapers and TV reported that the men were trafficking in cheap, virtually untraceable TracFones, an alleged favorite of terrorists, and that they had conducted surveillance of their alleged target. Michigan's WNEM TV-5 reported that the men were Texans, but were of "Palestinian descent" and that the phones, "can be used to remotely detonate explosive devices or even to make methamphetamine." Two days after the arrests, the Coast Guard announced that it had increased patrols near the bridge to ward off any possible attack.

Then the story began to deflate. On Aug. 14, the FBI and the Michigan State Police announced publicly that their investigation showed no evidence of a plot. "There is no information to indicate that the individuals arrested have any direct nexus to terrorism," Daniel D. Roberts, the FBI's special agent in charge, announced in a written statement. "There is no imminent threat to the Mackinaw[sic] Bridge."

Press reports suggested that Reene's evidence about the bridge plot was based on photographs confiscated from the men. But Michigan State Police spokeswoman Shanon Akans told Salon the FBI analyzed the photos and found only "tourist-type" shots. Ayad told me his clients had taken around 20 pictures of the bridge -- when they were stuck on it in a traffic jam. He said most of the confiscated photos were of "ducks and lakes and trees and ponds and things of this nature."

By the 14th, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, speaking in Chicago, was already sounding defensive about the Michigan arrests. "I don't know how many of you have ever gone to a store to purchase 80 to 100 cellphones at a time," he said. "I would consider that somewhat unusual and I think it would be perfectly legitimate to say, 'Hey, is there something going on here?'"

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