Mana Saleh Almanajam, 23, and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran, 20, were charged with misdemeanor trespassing and were being held at Orient Road Jail after a judge said Saturday she wanted more background information on them.
The two men arrived in the country six months ago on student visas and are enrolled at the English Language Institute at the University of South Florida.
Investigators said they boarded the school bus Friday, sat down and began speaking in Arabic. Their behavior concerned the driver, a substitute, who alerted the school district.
Officials who questioned the men Friday said they at first said they were from Morocco but later admitted being from Saudi Arabia. Both arrived in the country six months ago and are enrolled at the English Language Institute at USF. Their reasons for getting on the bus ranged from wanting to enroll in easier English classes to having some fun.
The pair's lawyer noted:
"They didn't differentiate between a school bus and public transportation"That little aside could be taken in a rather ominous context if you really think about it.
Of course, since we here in America are all racists and hate middle easterners, the true story, again courtesy of their lawyer is that:
"...the men got on the bus out of a cultural misunderstanding."What burns me up about this whole issue is the fact that immediately, their lawyer whips out the allmighty race card.
[He] called the court's decision to revoke bond an overreaction and tied to the men being Arabic and Muslim.Overreaction? I think not. I want to clear up some misconceptions about this amazing amount of 'racism' directed at Muslims. There is no such thing as 'Islamophobia.' That's a nice little convenient catch-all term designed to denigrate anyone who dares speak up against the growing reach of Islamic fundamentalism. We're not phobic of Muslims. We're cautious of them.
Why do we single them out? Let's see, we have daily suicide bombings in Israel, Iraq and pretty much every other country in the middle east. Muslims hijacking airplanes and slamming them into our civilian and military buildings. Muslims beheading and shooting civilians around the world. Car bombings, kidnappings, bombings of Naval vessels and Muslims calling for the destruction of entire countries and cultures all the while hiding their attempt to get nuclear weapons. On top of that, we have them threatening terror attacks if we attempt to even find out if they are working on nuclear weapons.
They've attacked us overseas for years and then in 1993 and 2001 managed to score direct hits here at home. In retaliation, we go over and set off some firecrackers in their sandbox and now WE are the aggressors?
On top of this stupidity, now we're being called racists and cultural bigots because we call shenanigans when two Saudis decide to climb onto a schoolbus loaded with kids and start laughing about it!
Do they really think we're NOT going to find that the least bit suspicious? They can't possibly be that stupid.
(Sources: Fox News, TBO.com
More: Michelle Malkin)
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