Monday, August 14, 2006

Last of the Egyptian Students Arrested

All eleven Egyptian exchange students have been rounded up and are in custody. Three were arrested on Friday in Des Moines, and yesterday the last two were picked up here in Virginia. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

The last two of the 11 Egyptian exchange students who failed to show up at their college program were apprehended Sunday in Richmond, Va., customs officials said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Mohamed Saleh Ahmed Maray, 20, and Mohamed Ibrahim Fouaad El Shenawy, 17, at an apartment building in Richmond on Sunday night. Virginia State Police and the Richmond Police helped locate the students.

Last Wednesday, one of the Egyptian students was arrested in Minneapolis and two were detained in Manville, N.J. On Thursday, two were arrested in Dundalk, Md., and one was arrested at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Three more were arrested Friday in Des Moines, Iowa.

And then the Mandatory No-Terror DisclaimerTM:

None of the students is considered a terrorism risk.

No, they aren’t; not any more.

Presumably this is the last we’ll hear on this topic. Due process will be diligently followed; the Egyptian youths will retain counsel, have their day in court, and be deported. Anything else behind their story will be consigned to obscurity, along with Joel Hinrichs and all the other little “no-connection-to-terrorism” jihad events.

I don’t think any further information on these guys will come to light in my lifetime. But, to you youngsters among our readers: Watch for the comprehensive histories of the war that come in thirty or forty years’ time, assuming there are any of us left to write them. Maybe there will be a footnote in the 2049 edition of The Comprehensive History of the Great Islamic Jihad about “the Egyptian ‘exchange student’ incident of 2006, in which eleven junior Al-Qaeda operatives were tasked with…”

You fill in the rest.

2 comments:

Voyager said...

None of the students is considered a terrorism risk.

Is anyone on a Mohammed Atta Travelling Fellowship considered a risk ? He wasn't. BTW....whatever happened to him....is he still on the USAF base ?

Anonymous said...

yeah, funny how they spread across the country so quickly, and to such spectacular tourist destinations! I mean, really, when I go to visit a new country, I always pick the equivalent of Dundalk, MD, Des Moines, IA and Minneapolis, MN.

How fast do you think you could travel to "family" after a BOLO is put out for you? As long as there's family somewhere, it's a good cover, no?