Brown-Skinned Lady Sits Next To Two Indian Men On Plane, Gets Strip-Searched And Detained For ‘Suspicious Activity’

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/09/14/319084/brown-skinned-lady-sits-next-to-two-indian-men-on-plane-gets-strip-searched-and-detained-for-suspicious-activity/

By Tanya Somanader on Sep 14, 2011 at 2:40 pm

On the same day the country gathered together to recognize the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) launched two F-16 jets to tail a Frontier Airlines flight from Denver after the crew reported “suspicious activity on board.” That “activity”? The existence of three dark-skinned passengers.Two Indian men and one self-described “half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife” from Ohio — all unknown to each other — made the mistake of boarding a plane on Sept. 11, 2011.

a SWAT team of about 10 police boarded the plane with machine guns and three dogs, approached Hebshi and the men’s aisle, handcuffed them, and escorted them off the plane:

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After interrogating and strip-searching the three passengers, the FBI determined hours later that “there was no real threat,” excusing the wildly disproportionate response by stating, “The public would rather us err on the side of caution than not.” When Hebshi asked her interrogator what sparked the concern, he replied “that someone on the plane had reported that the three of us in row 12 were conducting suspicious activity.” Hebshi noted that the “activity” was two Indian men “going to the bathroom in succession.”

Hebshi’s situation is an all-too-common example from one of 9/11′s salient legacies: racial and ethnic profiling. Multiple minorities — Muslim or not — have been banned from flights or subjected to humiliating searches solely because of their appearance. Indeed, U.S. officials even spurred diplomatic tension with India last year for detaining its U.N. envoy and demanding to physically check his turban.

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I've been around long enough to know that almost all of the people who "would rather us err on the side of caution than not" would be hopping mad if it happened to them personally. Look how big a fuss people make about taking off their shoes and belts.

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