ROMULUS -- A Yemeni immigrant caught with a knife hidden in a book at Detroit Metropolitan Airport was sentenced Tuesday to a year in jail and faces possible deportation. A jury convicted Mohammed S. Ghanem in Wayne Circuit Court of a felony charge of possessing a weapon in a secure area of an airport.Wayne County Circuit Judge James Callahan agreed the small blade posed little threat as a weapon, but was troubled about why Ghanem of Hamtramck would bring it. "It didn't really have any sharp edges to it," Callahan said of the 2 1/2 -inch blade. "Why would someone do it? One of the possible reasons to do that was to see if the security system could be breached. Thank God, it was not."
Ghanem, 22, insisted he had no idea the blade was embedded in his address book before a one-way flight to Yemen on Sept. 7.
"I dunno."He said he was returning to his country to find a bride.
Federal authorities determined Ghanem was not a terrorist threat, said his attorney, Nabih Ayad. Airport security found the knife embedded in an address book with a page glued over it. In the book, authorities found Arabic writing mentioning jihad and a reference to "making the local news," Ayad has said.
| But he's not a terrorist threat, nope, nope. |