Sunday, August 13, 2006

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I was watching the news last night when they glossed over this piece of information...

Three missing Egyptian students were arrested in Des Moines!

Three of the eleven Egyptian students who arrived in the United States two weeks ago but who never showed up for scheduled classes in Montana were arrested at a Des Moines residence late Friday.

The students, all legal immigrants, are the latest in a group of nine Egyptians to be arrested by federal authorities since they went AWOL from a month long exchange program at Montana State University in late July.

A spokesman with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Saturday offered little information on the Des Moines arrests, other than to say that investigators had “not identified any credible or imminent threat” posed by the foreign exchange students.

None of the three students currently face any criminal charges and are accused only of violating the terms of their visitors’ visas, which required them to maintain their status as students, said ICE spokesman Tim Counts.

...Federal agents arrested the three men around 8 p.m. Friday at an undisclosed Des Moines residence, without resistance and apparently without the help of Des Moines police. Agents had tracked the trio to Des Moines from San Francisco after their earlier arrival by airliner in New York.

I instantly thought of Tom Clancy's 2003 book, 'The Teeth of the Tiger'.

As part of the plot, Clancy has Islamic terrorists attacking shopping malls in "Middle America". One of those cities in the book was Des Moines.

In the book the terrorists are brought into the country by "coyotes" through Mexico.

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