Drug sniffing dog steps on Quran during traffic stop

[The Straight Story]

Subject of Iowa terror alert freed

Weapons charges against the Islamic convert were dropped; he will help solve a murder case.

By JEFF ECKHOFF
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
May 21, 2005

A California man who prompted a statewide terror alert last summer and claimed police defiled his Quran has been freed on a $100 fine and his promise to help solve a Polk County murder case.

Michael Wagner was arrested after a July traffic stop on Interstate Highway 80 near Council Bluffs. A state trooper found a handgun and three bulletproof vests in Wagner's vehicle, along with night-vision goggles, a concealed night-vision rifle scope and some Arabic books and papers.

Federal authorities this week declined to discuss Wagner, a 45-year-old Islamic convert. Government prosecutors have described him as "consistent with someone who is a danger to the community."

Wagner and his common-law wife, Linda McGuire, can be heard on a patrol car videotape from the July 14 traffic stop debating a plan to murder the troopers who searched their vehicle. The troopers had put Wagner's Arabic copy of the Quran on the side of the road and allowed it to be stepped on by a drug-sniffing dog.

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