Terrorists? Of course not!

Originally uploaded by johnew.

Moore street, in Dublin’s city centre is a melting pot for lots of different cultures now.
I don’t know the number of different nationalities that are represented there.

Phonecards, unlocking telephones, and everything related goes on there.

If these people were living in the US, they would now be branded as terrorists.

The Washington Post tells of 3 men of “Arab ethnicity” were arrested after their van was stopped and found to hold 1000 mobile phones.

Three Texas men were arraigned Saturday on terrorism-related charges after police found about 1,000 cell phones in their minivan, and prosecutors say they believe the men were targeting a bridge connecting Michigan’s Upper and Lower peninsulas.

But two of the men said they were only trying to buy and sell phones to make money, and one said the money was intended to help pay for his brother’s college education.

Officials have not said what they believe the men intended to do with the phones, most of which were prepaid TracFones. But Caro’s police chief 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.

“We’ve been checked by the FBI before,” he said. “They even gave us their card and everything.”

Defense lawyers said Houssaiky and Abulhassan planned to resell the phones simply to make money. They say the men were targeted only because they are of Arab descent.

They had bought the mobile phones in Michigan, and transported them back to Texas to (possibly) unlock and then resell for (possibly) a higher amount.

Thats what they would have done, I guess. Something that is pretty common practice all over the world.

“prosecutors say they believe the men were targeting a bridge connecting Michigan’s Upper and Lower peninsulas.”

What were they going to do? Set the mobile phones on fire, and throw them at the bridges?

The use of mobile phones, is as a trigger device for the explosives (as far as I know), not as the explosive device themselves.

Would you need 1000 phones to trigger a bomb? Of course not.

You would send multiple SMS messages from a web based SMS gateway, and blow up the remote devices that way.

Much easier than having to SMS each phone.

[NB: Of course I am not alleging these nice gentlemen in the [Flickr photo] are terrorists. I am just making a point!]

Technorati Tags: , , , ,


One Response to “Terrorists on Moore Street.”  

  1. 1 AdamMaguire.com - Blog » Archives » This was the week that blogged (13th - 19th August 2006)


Leave a Reply