Hauled off a plane in handcuffs, strip-searched & humiliated because they looked "suspicious"

tpsbmam

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Wed Sep-14-11 11:27 AM
Original message

Hauled off a plane in handcuffs, strip-searched & humiliated because they looked "suspicious"

Edited on Wed Sep-14-11 11:28 AM by tpsbmam

Shoshana Hebshi, 35, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday that she believes she was targeted because of her Middle Eastern appearance. Hebshi, who describes herself as half-Arabic, half-Jewish with a dark complexion, said she endured nearly four hours in police custody that included being forced off an airplane in handcuffs, strip-searched and interrogated.

This was the flight that was escorted by fighter jets after it was reported that 2 men were spending an unusually long time in the bathroom. Oh, and the report that they were in there together.....totally false, per the FBI. They were in separate bathrooms. I don't know what one was doing or even how long both were in the bathroom, one felt sick....I suspect neither was really in the bathroom long, it was just some brainwashed profiling bigot who saw two men of color who looked like Arabs (both men are Indian-Americans) & freaked out. And, and BTW, none of the three knew each other. Really? Three brown people don't actually know each other? I'm shocked! :sarcasm:

Saying she had no idea about how long or how many times they went to the bathroom:

"I really wasn't paying attention," said Hebshi, a freelance writer, editor and stay-at-home mother of twin six-year-old boys who lives in a suburb of Toledo, Ohio. "I was minding my own business � sleeping, reading, playing on my phone."

<snip>

"I can understand they were just doing their job," she told the AP. "My beef is with these laws and regulations that are so hypersensitive. ... Even if you're an innocent bystander, you have no rights."

This is from her blog:

Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit

<snip>

Just as I hung up the phone, the captain came over the loudspeaker and announced that the airport authorities wanted to move the airplane to a different part of the airport. Must be a blocked gate or something, I thought. But then he said: Everyone remain in your seats or there will be consequences. Sounded serious. I looked out the window and saw a squadron of police cars following the plane, lights flashing. I turned to my neighbor, who happened to be an Indian man, in wonderment. What is going on? Others on the plane were remarking at the police as well. Getting a little uneasy, I decided the best thing for me to do was to tweet about the experience. If the plane was going to blow up, at least there�d be some record on my part.

<snip>

Soon the plane was stopping in some remote part of the airport, far from any buildings, and out the window I see more police cars coming to surround the plane. Maybe there�s a fugitive on the plane, I say to my neighbor, who is also texting and now shooting some photos of the scene outside. He asks me to take a few, as I have a better angle from my window seat. A few dozen uniformed and plainclothes officers are huddled off the side of the plane. I don�t see any guns, and it isn�t clear what�s going on.

<snip>

Someone shouted for us to place our hands on the seats in front of us, heads down. The cops ran down the aisle, stopped at my row and yelled at the three of us to get up. �Can I bring my phone?� I asked, of course. What a cliffhanger for my Twitter followers! No, one of the cops said, grabbing my arm a little harder than I would have liked. He slapped metal cuffs on my wrists and pushed me off the plane. The three of us, two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and me, a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio, were being detained.

<snip>

Again, I asked what was going on, and the man 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?

From the sound of it, the agents who searched her and questioned her were decent. They were apologetic and one noted that it was 9/11 and people were "seeing ghosts." More like they're seeing brown people and freaking the hell out. As she absolutely rightly says, she has no doubt she was singled out because of her appearance.

Of course she was "singled out because of her appearance" -- this is Amurika, after all, that's the way a significant portion of the population thinks and operates!