"If I was them, I would say a mistake was done, and the police overreacted," Hamad said.

CHICAGO — The unsubstantiated terror charges against five Arab-American men for buying prepaid cellular telephones have drawn fire over police overreaction and racial profile.

"I think (prosecutors) are stuck in a corner and looking for a safe place," Imad Hamad of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Michigan told Reuters on Wednesday, August 16.

"If I was them, I would say a mistake was done, and the police overreacted."

Authorities have dropped terror charges against Ali Houssaiky and Osama Abulhassan, both 20, after they proved to have no terrorism ties.

They were arrested after they drove to Ohio to buy around 600 cell phones and police found a security guide for an Arab airline in their vehicle.

Prosecutors claim that the untraceable cell phones being purchased were valuable tools for terror groups and might serve as detonators for bombs.

The decision to drop the charges came a day after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) cleared three Texas men arrested in Michigan with a van full of cell phones of having links to terrorism.

Supporters of the five men say they were merely traveling to discount stores buying prepaid cellular telephones with the aim of reselling the phones to earn money.

Racial Profile

Attorney Nabih Ayad, representing the three men arrested Friday in Caro, Michigan, said the case was one of "racial profile" against Arabs and Muslims.

"Had their names been Bill or John, they would not be sitting in jail today," Ayad said.

"It's very alarming and very unfortunate that a local government is able to bring on charges that bring national concern and create all the chaos that occurs from a terror threat -- based on people's ethnic origin," regretted the lawyer.

The men still face misdemeanor counts of falsification stemming from allegations that they initially gave deputies different names than the names that appeared on their IDs.

Prosecutors said the men lied about why they had a dozen cell phones.

Police also found $11,000 in cash, a map marking Wal-Mart stores from Ohio to South Carolina, and what prosecutors described as airport security information and airline passenger lists.

But their lawyer said that the airport information had been left by the mother of one of the men who works at an airport.

"I haven't heard what evidence of terrorism they have," said Raymond Smith, an attorney defending one of the accused.

"In most cases, this would be no big deal. But this is rural America."

Thousands of Muslims and Arabs were rounded up and questioned in the US in the weeks and months following the September attacks.

Some of the detainees have sued the US government after their release for inhumane and degrading treatment and a total blackout of communications in detention centers on the US soil.

The US government agreed in February to pay $300,000 to settle an illegal detention lawsuit brought by an Egyptian man who was among hundreds of Muslims rounded up in New York after 9/11.

Late March, two US federal officials were charged with hiding evidence to win conviction in a terrorism case against four Muslim men following the 9/11.