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CBS – August 4, 2004
Republican Rep. Katherine Harris regrets
her bogus claim of Indiana terror plot
WASHINGTON Aug. 4, 2004 — Republican Rep. Katherine Harris said Wednesday she regrets concerns caused by her claim that a plot existed to blow up the power grid in Carmel, Ind. City officials disputed the claims of a plot.
"I was told in an open, group setting that a recent situation threatened a Midwestern community and that it had been diffused," Harris said Wednesday. "I regret that I had no knowledge of the sensitive nature of this situation and any undue concern this may have caused."
But the Florida lawmaker stands by her statement that the United States has thwarted more than 100 potential terrorist attacks.
Harris, who was at the center of the political storm over the disputed 2000 presidential election, made the comments about terrorism and the plot on Monday at a rally for President Bush in Venice, Fla., and a subsequent interview with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
She told the audience that while in the Midwest recently, a mayor told her about a plot in Carmel and how a man of Middle Eastern heritage had been arrested and hundreds of pounds of explosives were found in his home. "He had plans to blow up the area's entire power grid," she said, according to the newspaper.
City officials in Carmel said they know of no such plot. "We're aware of the comments we read in the paper," said Tim Green, assistant chief of police in Carmel, a town about 10 miles north of Indianapolis. "We're not aware of any plans to blow up Carmel's power grid." …..
http://printerfriendly.abcnews.com/printerfriendly/Print?fetchFromGLUE=true&GLUEService=ABCNewsCom
South Florida Sun-Sentinel - August 7, 2004
Detainee in terror scare talks of profiling
By Beth P. Krane
An Arab-American man at the center of last week's Port of Palm Beach terrorist scare said Friday that he thinks law enforcement officials overreacted because of his first name.
Riviera Beach police and federal law enforcement officials detained Mohammad Suid, 30, of the U.S. Virgin Islands, for hours and shut down the port and surrounding communities after stopping the businessman for speeding and finding his name on a national watch list. Officials later said it was a case of mistaken identity.
"I'm an ordinary, regular guy. I've never had anything like this happen," said Suid, who was born and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands. "I definitely felt like it was racial profiling. ... I understand they were trying to do their jobs, but I think they could have handled it a lot better."
Suid, who runs a chain of department stores in the Virgin Islands with his father, said he was speeding in a U-Haul at the port when police stopped him. He had come from Orlando, where he purchased a cargo truck and furniture for his stores, with his cousin and had just dropped off the truck and other items to be shipped to the Virgin Islands. Suid said he was speeding because he was in a hurry to catch a flight from Miami back home.
"An officer asked me for my license, saw my name and asked me to step out of the truck," he said. "Then they started searching the truck."
Officers seemed uneasy when they found a license plate Suid had used to drive the new cargo truck from Orlando to the port, he said. They kept Suid, his cousin and a third man, who had driven the truck from Orlando, on the ground near the trucks for more than two hours before Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Border Patrol agents began swarming the area, he said.
"I'm asking them the whole time, `What's the problem? What's the problem?' but they wouldn't answer me," said Suid, who noticed the officers evacuating the port and surrounding communities. "I was like, `Man, what's going on? All of this because of me?'"
Suid said the chaos was upsetting to his autistic cousin, Khalid Suid, 19, who lives with him. Khalid still has trouble sleeping at night because of the incident, Mohammad Suid said.
The three men were fingerprinted twice -- once at the scene and again at the U.S. Border Patrol office -- and had their pictures taken, even though no charges were filed, Suid said. He was given a traffic citation for driving 51 mph in a 35 mph zone, Riviera Beach Police records show.
The trio was released more than four hours after the 2:30 p.m. July 28 traffic stop, but the men were given little explanation as to why they had been detained, Suid said.
"They told me it was a case of mistaken identity with Mohammad, but how many Mohammads are there in the whole world?" …..
Riviera Beach Mayor Michael Brown said racial profiling was not at play: "There were a series of things that happened that caused our officers to believe that this was a suspicious individual."…..
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-pmohammad07aug07,0,3347238.story?coll=sfla-news-palm
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