In what has become just a routine pattern, the wife of one of three men arrested with 1,000 cellular telephones is proclaiming the men's innocence. The story she tells is that the three men were simply going to make a $5 per phone profit by selling the phones to a man in Texas.
"They're locked up in jail for something that they didn't do," 20-year-old Lina Odeh told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Her husband, Louai Abdelhamied Othman of Mesquite, along with his brother, Adham Abdelhamid Othman of Dallas, and their cousin Maruan Awad Muhareb of Mesquite, are charged with collecting or providing materials for terrorist acts and surveillance of a vulnerable target for terrorist purposes.
Police found about 1,000 cell phones in the men's minivan. Authorities have not said what they believe the men intended to do with the phones, most of which were prepaid TracFones. But the police chief in Caro, Mich., where they were arrested, said cell phones can be used as detonators, and prosecutors in a similar case in Ohio have said that TracFones are often used by terrorists because they are not traceable.
Odeh said the men were buying the phones to sell to a man in Dallas for a profit of about $5 per phone. She said they were in Michigan because so many people in the Dallas area are doing the same thing that the phones are often sold out.
Odeh said she thought her husband and her relatives were targeted because of their Arab descent. The men's families come from Jerusalem, she said.
The men were stopped early Friday about 80 miles north of Detroit after purchasing 80 cell phones from a Wal-Mart. Police said they found about 1,000 phones in their minivan. The men were arrested Friday afternoon.
No pleas were entered at the arraignment Saturday at a District Court in Caro. A magistrate set bond at $750,000 apiece and the men were being held at the Tuscola County Jail, police said.
"All we did is buy the phones to sell and make money," Louai Othman told the magistrate. He said authorities had previously stopped the group in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Muhareb told the magistrate: "This is a misunderstanding." He said he was selling the phones to earn money to help pay for his brother's college education.
None of which explains why the men were stripping the packaging, chargers and batteries from the phones, does it? Nor why the cell phones were of specific types only. Nor why someone would be willing to pay more than the retail price for phones that have been stripped of the things that come in the package. Those things, taken together, do not indicate a beneficent intent to the activity.
