Quote:
Originally Posted by Beauty Mark
But what happens when they decide only one Muslim at a time can ride on a plane?
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This is much worse, in my opinion, and it's getting worse as time goes on and media hypes up tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims. Here's an example from just last month:
"Concerned passenger on delayed flight contradicts airline's account"
By Debbi Farr Baker
UNION-TRIBUNE BREAKING NEWS TEAM
2:36 p.m. August 31, 2007
SAN DIEGO
Leigh Robbins, 35, of Richmond, Va., said she got off American Airlines Flight 590 bound for Chicago Tuesday night rather than take the flight with seven Middle Eastern men onboard. She said their behavior made her nervous, and that she was scared for herself and her sons.
The airline said on Wednesday that returning the plane to the gate to let her off caused a delay that prevented the plane from taking off before the airport's 11:30 p.m. curfew. But, according to Robbins, “The plane never left the terminal with me in it.” She said she was on the jet for less than five minutes, that the flight attendants had not yet given their safety talk when she got off. As proof, she noted her hotel reservations for that night were booked at 11:16 p.m., just two minutes after the airline had said the plane had left the gate.
Airline officials did not return messages Friday.
Robbins said she now regrets the incident and wishes she could apologize to the men.
Aboard the plane
Robbins said she was seated in the last row of the plane before the doors closed when one of the group of men left his seat and went to the restroom. She said she heard him “clunking around” inside. The man then came out and stood directly behind her. She saw that he was looking at the people on the plane, turning from left to right and right to left and “glaring.” “He looked so mean, the way he was looking at everyone, it was very frightening, like something out of a movie,” she said.
She said she was alarmed by having the man stand behind her, and by the fact that his traveling companions were scattered throughout the plane. “It traumatized me,” she said. “I can't describe how afraid I was.”
At that point she told the flight attendant she had to get off the plane. She said the attendant remarked that the men were strange. She gathered up her sons and their things and left the plane. She said she never even heard any of the men speaking while they were on the plane, though she had chatted with one of them in the terminal.
About 20 minutes later, while she was at the ticket counter making hotel arrangements, an airline official came up to the counter and said the plane was returning to the gate, Robbins said. She said the official was angry and complained that the airline would now have to find hotels for everyone, Robbins said.
She left the airport before the rest of flight 590's passengers disembarked.
The men's side
When the rest of the passengers got off the plane, the group of seven Iraqi and Iraqi-American men were immediately separated from the rest of the passengers and questioned by authorities, said Lawrence Garcia, an attorney representing six of the men. The men worked for a defense contractor and had been training U.S. Marines.
He said the men were baffled about why they were being questioned and felt embarrassed, that they were being treated like criminals. David Al Watan, 30, of Dearborn, Mich., said he was the leader of the group of seven men. Al Watan said he's an American citizen who came to this country from a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia in 1994 after the first Gulf war. He is from Nasiriyah, in southern Iraq, and fled the country in 1991. He said his mother was killed by Saddam Hussein's regime.
He said none of the men had any idea when the jet turned around that it had anything to do with them. After the jet taxied onto the runway, the pilot announced that there was a situation onboard and the plane would have to return to the gate. When the Arabic-speaking men returned to the waiting area, they were taken aside by authorities and asked for identification. Garcia said they realized at that point that they were suspected of being terrorists.
“Everyone who didn't look like us went off and did whatever they wanted,” Al Watan said.
They showed the airport police officers their identification as well as certificates of appreciation for the work they had done. The officers told the men that it was all a mistake and apologized. Al Watan said no one from the airlines spoke to them.
Before the flight
Robbins said she first expressed her concerns to officials about a group of men who had gathered at the gate and were speaking Arabic to each other. She said that she had arrived early and was waiting with her 4- and 9-year-old sons when a young Middle Eastern man struck up a conversation with her. She said she had let him go in front of her in the security line. He told her that he was in the army and that he was going home to Detroit before leaving for Iraq for a year. Robbins said he was very friendly. Her oldest son shared some gum with him and showed him his collection of quarters. He did not have an accent and spoke perfect English, Robbins said.
He asked her what she thought about the Iraq war. She said she declined to discuss it. He made a comment about her son being “a spoiled America boy.” What he said about being in the army bothered her though. He was not clean-shaven and didn't have a service man's haircut. “He didn't look like he was in the military,” she said.
Then the other six men showed up and stood in line at the ticket counter, Robbins said. When they were done they came over to the man and spoke with him in Arabic and he got up and the group seated themselves someplace else. She said the talk about the war, the man's comment about her son, the way he got up and walked away with the other men combined with the fact that he kept looking at her made her feel uncomfortable. She said she gathered up her boys and went to security, out of the men's eyesight. “I told them what was going on and they laughed at me,” she said.
She spoke with a police officer on the phone and three officers came to talk with her. They listened to her story and assured her that the men had gone through security and that their baggage had been checked. In the meantime, a security officer and an American Airlines official walked through the gate area and said everything was OK. She asked them if they talked to the men and was told no, that there was no suspicious activity, that the men were just sitting there.
“I was still nervous. . . . Maybe I was overreacting,” Robbins said. “But you think about it everyday. Someone can still get through security. All I wanted was for them to talk to them. All I could think of was 9/11.”
Once she got home and saw a news report that said the men had been training U.S. Marines, she felt both awful at what happened and relieved.
“I do feel very bad but I was just protecting my tiny little family,” she said, noting she had never before flown with her sons without her husband. “How can you overreact when it's your children? What if there had been a terrorist attack and I could've done something about it?”
Robbins said she would do the same thing again under the same circumstances. Yet she also said that she would apologize to the men if she could. “I know they are very upset and they have every right to be and I'm very sorry, but I'd do anything to protect my kids.”
Garcia, the attorney, said the men love America, but want to have steps taken so that this does not happen again. He said they do understand racial profiling and why people may be afraid of them, but that it has been six years since 9/11 and by now airline officials should have a more sophisticated and discrete way to handle such situations, Garcia said. “They can't just assume someone has a bomb strapped to them just because they are Arabic, ” he said. Al Watan said the incident left him depressed and embarrassed and that he wanted an apology from the airline.
“While they sit in their air conditioning, I was out in the desert helping to save Marines' lives,” he said. “I am an American. I love this country. I would die for it.”
So here's my question: should the 7 men sue the airline?
