Capt Bringdown
09-14-2011, 08:50 AM
Passenger: Was cuffed, searched over 'appearance' (http://news.yahoo.com/passenger-cuffed-searched-over-appearance-003800344.html)
DETROIT (AP) — A U.S. woman said Tuesday that she endured nearly four hours in police custody that included being forced off an airplane in handcuffs, strip-searched and interrogated at Detroit's airport on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks — all, she believes, because of her Middle Eastern appearance.
Shoshana Hebshi, 35, told The Associated Press she was one of three people removed from a Denver-to-Detroit Frontier Airlines flight after landing Sunday afternoon. Authorities say fighter jets escorted the plane after its crew reported that two people were spending a long time in a bathroom — the two men sitting next to Hebshi in the 12th row.
The FBI has said the three didn't know each other. One man felt ill and got up to use the restroom and another man in the same row also left his seat to go to the bathroom. The FBI said they never were inside together.
Hebshi, who describes herself as half-Arabic, half-Jewish with a dark complexion, told the AP after they landed, she noticed police first surrounding, then storming the plane.
Later she wrote (twitter), "I see stairs coming our way...yay!" Her last post said, "Majorly armed cops coming aboard."
It's then than she says the officers ordered her and the men, whom she described as Indian, to get up.
She said she was patted down and taken by car to a holding cell. A uniformed female officer eventually came in and told Hebshi to take off her clothes.
After the strip search, another officer who identified herself as a Homeland Security agent led Hebshi to another room, Hebshi said. There, a man who identified himself as an FBI agent asked her a series of questions while a female agent took notes, Hebshi said.
Hebshi said that when she asked what was going on, the male agent told her someone on the plane reported that she and the men on her row were "conducting suspicious activity."
- more - (http://news.yahoo.com/passenger-cuffed-searched-over-appearance-003800344.html)
Fighter jets are scrambled...the plane is surrounded and stormed by armed police...passengers are taken off the plane, cuffed, strip searched and interrogated...because some jackass accused them of "conducting suspicious activity."
DETROIT (AP) — A U.S. woman said Tuesday that she endured nearly four hours in police custody that included being forced off an airplane in handcuffs, strip-searched and interrogated at Detroit's airport on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks — all, she believes, because of her Middle Eastern appearance.
Shoshana Hebshi, 35, told The Associated Press she was one of three people removed from a Denver-to-Detroit Frontier Airlines flight after landing Sunday afternoon. Authorities say fighter jets escorted the plane after its crew reported that two people were spending a long time in a bathroom — the two men sitting next to Hebshi in the 12th row.
The FBI has said the three didn't know each other. One man felt ill and got up to use the restroom and another man in the same row also left his seat to go to the bathroom. The FBI said they never were inside together.
Hebshi, who describes herself as half-Arabic, half-Jewish with a dark complexion, told the AP after they landed, she noticed police first surrounding, then storming the plane.
Later she wrote (twitter), "I see stairs coming our way...yay!" Her last post said, "Majorly armed cops coming aboard."
It's then than she says the officers ordered her and the men, whom she described as Indian, to get up.
She said she was patted down and taken by car to a holding cell. A uniformed female officer eventually came in and told Hebshi to take off her clothes.
After the strip search, another officer who identified herself as a Homeland Security agent led Hebshi to another room, Hebshi said. There, a man who identified himself as an FBI agent asked her a series of questions while a female agent took notes, Hebshi said.
Hebshi said that when she asked what was going on, the male agent told her someone on the plane reported that she and the men on her row were "conducting suspicious activity."
- more - (http://news.yahoo.com/passenger-cuffed-searched-over-appearance-003800344.html)
Fighter jets are scrambled...the plane is surrounded and stormed by armed police...passengers are taken off the plane, cuffed, strip searched and interrogated...because some jackass accused them of "conducting suspicious activity."