Megahed, Mohamed to receive separate trials

TAMPA, Fla. — Two Egyptian college students facing federal explosives charges will get completely separate trials, a federal judge decided Monday.

Former University of South Florida students Ahmed Mohamed, 26, and Youssef Megahed, 22, were to be tried together next week on one of the charges stemming from their August arrests during a traffic stop in Goose Creek.

But a new indictment issued last week adding charges, as well as attorneys' conflicting schedules, led U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday to split the trials completely. Megahed's trial is now set for May 5, with Mohamed's scheduled for July 7.

Berkeley County deputies who stopped their car Aug. 4 said they found items to build pipe bombs in the trunk. The men contend those items — PVC pipe containing a mixture of sugar, potassium nitrate and cat litter, plus fuses — were ingredients for homemade, low-grade fireworks.

But also in the car, prosecutors say, was a laptop computer containing a video Mohamed made to demonstrate how to turn a remote-control toy into a detonator for a bomb.

According to an FBI affidavit, Mohamed told authorities he made the video "to assist those persons in Arabic countries to defend themselves against the infidels invading their countries."

Megahed will be tried on charges of illegally transporting explosives and illegal possession of a destructive device.

Mohamed will face those charges, as well as counts of making a video to demonstrate the use of explosives, providing material support to terrorism, carrying a destructive device relating to that support of terrorism and possessing a firearm in violation of his visa rules.

Federal prosecutors have yet to present any evidence linking the men — who were stopped for speeding near the Charleston Naval Weapons Station — to a specific plan to carry out a terrorist act. The men told authorities they were on an innocent college road trip to see Carolina beaches.