Ahmed Abda Sherf Mohamed, 24, and Youssef Samir Megahed, 21, have been charged by authorities in South Carolina with possession of an incendiary advice, a felony punishable by at least two and up to fifteen years’ imprisonment. AP quotes the sheriff as saying: “They admitted to having what they said were fireworks. Based on the officer’s judgment at hand, based on what he had seen, we judged it to be other than fireworks.” Authorities remain tight-lipped about exactly what they found in the car. Their bomb technicians did detonate something seized from the car at 2:45 a.m. Sunday.

The two are engineering students at the University of South Florida’s campus at Tampa – the same school where Prof. Sami al-Arian, while a computer science professor USF’s College of Engineering, was running an outpost of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization. Al-Arian pled guilty in 2006 to conspiring to provide services to PIJ. The FBI, it should be noted, has not altered its earlier statement that no terror ties have been established.