Chris Lawrence at OTB:

Three Palestinian men from Dallas were arrested over the weekend in Michigan after a Wal-Mart employee found their purchase of 80 prepaid TracFones suspicious and authorities found over 1,000 of the phones in their van, along with photos and video of the Mackinac Bridge:

If the hundreds of prepaid cellular telephones found in the minivan seemed odd, the pictures of the Mackinac Bridge were downright troubling to Tuscola County law enforcement officials who have charged three Texas men with terrorism-related crimes.

The phones plus photographs and videos of the 5-mile-long bridge led authorities to believe that the men — two brothers and a cousin, all of Middle Eastern heritage — were targeting the iconic structure linking the Upper and Lower peninsulas, according to a law enforcement official familiar with details of the case.

[...]

However, the article also includes a rather plausible explanation for why the men would have so many of the phones… good old fashioned arbitrage:

The wife of one of three Texas men arraigned on terrorism-related charges in Michigan says her husband and his relatives are not terrorists, but are simply trying to make money by reselling cell phones.

[...]

[Read the whole thing here.]

They can be doing it for the money and it an still be terrorism related.

An aside on a common misconception that's beginning to really annoy this ol' Dog: TracFones are not "talk and toss," they're quality "pay as you go" telephones manufactured by Nokia and Motorala. You buy a predetermined amount of airtime and when you start getting low you buy more. No contracts. I'm on my fourth one; the first one wasn't digital, the second one couldn't be converted to an Illinois number when I relocated and the third one quit working at the Texas state line when I went to  visit my daughter and her family. I'd probably have upgraded to a new phone at least a couple of times by now just to keep up with technical improvements (voice mail, text messaging) anyway, and they aren't all that expensive.

Contributed by Bill Faith on August 14, 2006 at 09:44 AM in Bill Faith, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink

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