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Hosam Maher Husein Smadi‘s probable cause hearing is a week from today in U.S. Magistrate Judge Irma Ramirez’s court, during which time the Jordanian government wants to be filled in and kept in the loop. But over the weekend, the 19-year-old arrested Thursday for plotting to blow up Fountain Place father once more insisted, look, there isn’t probable cause — he’s a good kid who was led astray by the undercover FBI agents who gave him the intert bomb. “Instead of encouraging my son to become a terrorist, the FBI should have focused on changing his thoughts and putting him on the right track again,” Maher Smadi told the Jordan Times. “All they did was to add a new name to the list of terrorists.”
And folks who knew Smadi down in Italy tell The New York Times in this morning’s paper that, well, he never game them probable cause to be worried. Because, far as they could tell, he was a good kid who, apparently, liked to dance:
Mr. Smadi was an extremely outgoing 19-year-old, friends in this tiny town said, who smoked marijuana and drank beer with his peers in the complex of domed cottages where he lived. They said he did endless favors for his friends, held barbecues and baby-sat for his neighbor’s children. He favored flashy black clothes and always wore earrings and a huge pistol-shaped belt buckle bedizened with fake jewels.
Whenever he had a chance, he went to two dance clubs in Dallas — Cirque and Europa — that played Arab techno music. At home, he invited friends over to watch action movies on his widescreen television — his favorites included Death Race and Transformers. In the apartment complex, he would often put Middle Eastern techno music on a boombox and dance wildly.
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