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Terror alert missed 11 counties' troopers
©Associated Press
September 19, 2002
TAMPA -- The Florida Highway Patrol says dispatchers failed to alert troopers in 11 counties along the Interstate 75 corridor that three terrorist suspects could be driving through.
Officials are trying to find out why the alert wasn't broadcast Sept. 12 to troopers in all seven counties in the Tampa region and four of the 10 counties in the Fort Myers region, said Ken Howes, an FHP spokesman in Tallahassee.
"There are just a lot of questions . . ." Howes said Wednesday. "The bottom line is basically that it was a human mistake."
The alert was issued about 5 p.m. Sept. 12 by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to every police agency in the state, Howes said. Civilian dispatchers in the Tampa and Fort Myers regional headquarters would have received the alert via computer and been responsible for passing it on to road officers.
The threat was a false alarm.
Ayman Gheith, Kambiz Butt and Omar Choudhary, medical students on their way to a Miami hospital, were pulled over on Alligator Alley in southwest Florida by a Collier County sheriff's deputy.
They were detained for 17 hours and their vehicles searched, but were released after no evidence was found. They denied any wrongdoing.
Georgia authorities issued the alert after a woman said she overheard the students making seeming references to terrorist plans at a restaurant in Calhoun, Ga. FHP troopers failed to get the alert in Sumter, Citrus, Hernando, Pasco, Polk, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte and Lee counties.
"We received the information. We just didn't get it out," said Lt. Sterling King, an FHP spokesman in Tampa. "We're trying to find out who dropped the ball."
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