Passenger: Was cuffed, searched over 'appearance'

[The Northerner]

DETROIT (AP) — A woman says she was taken off an airplane in handcuffs, strip-searched and interrogated by authorities in Michigan on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks "simply because" of her appearance.

Shoshana Hebshi told The Associated Press on Tuesday she was one of three people escorted off a plane in handcuffs from a Denver-to-Detroit Frontier Airlines flight. The 35-year-old mother from a Toledo, Ohio, suburb says they didn't know each other but were in the same row.

Hebshi says the men were Indian and describes herself as half-Arab, half-Jewish, with dark complexion.

Two fighter jets escorted the plane after its crew reported suspicious activity.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iFqq_u1vYs45Sq0g5SUyro-19_PQ

[pampango]

1. James Fallows: Flying While Half-Arab (and Half-Jewish). This One Is Shocking.

Now, read this account from one of those three who escaped with the apparent good fortune of not being charged. Her name is Shoshana Hebshi, and she is an American citizen with a Saudi father and a Jewish mother. She is married and is herself a mother, and she lives in the Midwest. That's her picture, at right, from a column she did about her love of bicycles, two years ago while a graduate student in journalism at Iowa State.

To skip ahead to the punch line, on this flight she was sitting by chance in a row with two Indian-looking passengers, neither of whom knew the other or knew her. But collectively they aroused the suspicion of other passengers or crew, and when the plane landed, heavily armed troops stormed aboard, handcuffed the three of them, and took them off for extensive questioning. After which they were eventually released with "no charges filed." Which is fair enough, considering that like everyone else on the plane they were simply trying to travel from Denver to Detroit and had done absolutely nothing wrong except to have "suspicious" looks.

And, much later, after the authorities begin to establish that she is not a threat:

>>Again, I asked what was going on, and the said judging from their line of questioning that I could probably guess, but that someone on the plane had reported that the three of us in row 12 were conducting suspicious activity. What is the likelihood that two Indian men who didn't know each other and a dark-skinned woman of Arab/Jewish heritage would be on the same flight from Denver to Detroit? Was that suspicion enough? Even considering that we didn't say a word to each other until it became clear there were cops following our plane? Perhaps it was two Indian man going to the bathroom in succession?<<

Her account goes on, at quite some length. I think if you start reading you will continue. I should say that I cannot independently vouch for her version of events -- and it is so specific and detailed that I'm sure it will be challenged by the airline or police if it's inaccurate. But the worst thing about it is that it is so easy to believe. Compared with this, the Vance Gilbert "flying while black" case is nothing.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/09/flying-while-half-arab-and-half-jewish-this-one-is-shocking/244984

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. It's called making amens for 9/11 ten years out.

That barn door is mighty big & tough to close I guess.

That poor soul had to pass through the whole god damn TSA security gauntlet. If that isn't good enough, then scrap the whole cha-cha & do something else.