Suspicious Saudi Men Board Schoolbus

Two Saudi men boarded a Tampa, FL school bus on Friday and were arrested for trespassing on school property once they reached the high school the bus was headed to.

Mana Saleh Almanajam, 23, and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran, 20, were reported laughing, speaking in Arabic and "making funny sounds." One man was dressed in shorts and a trenchcoat in the 80-degree Florida weather. Neither man had any identification in their possession when arrested, and both gave several stories about why they were on the bus, ranging from wanting to go to Wharton and look around, to waning to see a high school, to they just wanted to have some fun, to wanting to enroll in English classes.

Both defendants are in America on student visas, and enrolled at the English Language Institute at USF since January, in hopes of qualifying as full-time college students.

Due to these inconsistencies, the judge denied bail until their identities and backgrounds could be confirmed.

The FBI, Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Regional Domestic Security Task Force (whew) were notified.

Enter CAIR.

Ahmed Bedier, director of the Central Florida Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the St. Petersburg Times the incident sounded like a cultural mixup.

"Obviously, if they had recently arrived here and they are from Saudi Arabia, they may not be familiar with American rules and laws," Bedier said. "They might have thought it was some kind of public transportation."

"The only reason (this happened) is because of who they are, and that's wrong," he said. "Thus far, it doesn't seem like they've been afforded their full rights for something as simple as getting on the wrong bus."

Stop right there. Maybe they didn't realize that a big yellow bus wasn't public transport. Did they also mistake all of the kids with bookbags?

I can say that if any adult men (or women) got on to my child's schoolbus, I'd be freaked out!
But were they stopped for who they were? Absolutely. You've got an two adult men from an area of the world infamous for bombing buses full of children boarding a schoolbus in a trenchcoat in hot weather. Then, they lie repeatedly about why they did it... You do the math.