3 More Egyptian Students In Custody

Six of the 11 Egyptian exchange students who failed to show up for their college program are now in custody after three additional students were arrested Thursday, the FBI said.

El Sayed Ahmed Elsayed Ibrahim, 20, and Alaa Abd El Fattah Ali El Bahnasawi, 20, were arrested at a residence in Dundalk, Md., outside Baltimore, by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Chicago police detained Ahmed Mohamed Mohamed Abou El Ela, 22, at OHare International Airport as he was attempting to book a flight to Montana, the FBI said. Immigration agents later took El Ela into custody.

All are being held on administrative immigration violations because they did not report on time to their month-long program at Montana State University in Bozeman, Mont.

None of the students is considered a terrorism risk and FBI officials stressed that there are no ties between the Egyptians and the alleged terror plot broken up by British authorities.

The Egyptian men were among a group of 17 students who arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York from Cairo on July 29 with valid visas, according to U.S. authorities and Montana State University officials.

Eslam Ibrahim Mohamed El-Dessouki, 21, was taken into custody Wednesday in Minnesota on what was termed an administrative immigration violation as an out-of-status student, according to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

Two other students — Mohamed Ragab Mohamed Abd Alla and Ebrahim Mabrouk Moustafa Abdou, both 22 — surrendered to police in Manville, N.J., after hearing media reports that they were wanted, FBI spokesman Steven Siegal said.

The remaining five Egyptians still are being sought.

The government tightened the student visa process after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. One of the hijackers involved in the attacks had arrived in the United States with a student visa, and immigration officials approved student visas for two other hijackers after they entered the country. A fourth attended flight training school without a student visa.