Man was arming for 'war,' FBI says

A St. Charles man obtained fully automatic weapons and tried to buy as many explosives as possible in preparation for what an associate called "war," the FBI says in court documents.

He bought three rifles and a Claymore anti-personnel mine and negotiated for a case of hand grenades, documents obtained by the Post-Dispatch show.

Mousa M. Abuelawi, 22, of Franjoe Court, was arrested Dec. 29 and charged on complaints accusing him of three counts of illegal possession or distribution of a machine gun and conspiracy to violate machine gun statutes.

Abuelawi, a Palestinian immigrant free on $50,000 bond, could not be reached. His brother declined to comment on his behalf. His lawyers, Scott Rosenblum and Gil Sison, did not return calls.

The context of the word "war" was not explained in court filings; the FBI declined to comment.

The man to whom the word was attributed, Thaer Abde Sumad, said in an interview Thursday that the purchases were not intended for terrorism but to make money supplying street gangs in a St. Louis turf war.

Sumad, 23, is not charged, although he is identified in an FBI affidavit as being present for one of the transactions.

He told a reporter he had no role in handling the firearms or explosives. He said he was at a meeting between Abuelawi and a federal informer outside a St. Louis gas station where Sumad works only because he knows both and wanted to say hello.

Sumad suggested that he and Abuelawi attracted special attention because of the sound of their names and their Arab ethnicity.