Ohio Woman Describes Becoming a ‘Suspicious’ Person

[groovedaddy]

On the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Shoshana Hebshi, 35, a freelance writer and stay-at-home mother of 6-year-old twins from a suburb of Toledo, Ohio, was on a plane flying from Denver to Detroit when something she — or another passenger in her row of seats — had done caused the government to scramble F-16 fighter planes and escort Frontier Airlines Flight 623 until it landed safely. The plane was taken to a remote part of the airport, and armed federal authorities handcuffed Ms. Hebshi and her seatmates and took them off the plane. She was placed in a jail cell, strip-searched and interrogated by the F.B.I. before eventually being released. The two men in her row were also allowed to go. Ms. Hebshi says she believes she was detained because she is “dark-skinned” — she is half Arab, half Jewish. She described her seatmates as Indian. The F.B.I. says it was responding to reports that Ms. Hebshi and the men were behaving suspiciously. But Ms. Hebshi said she was never told what about her behavior, or that of her seatmates, had been alarming to others on the plane. Ms. Hebshi discusses:

QUESTION Do you remember having done anything on the plane that might have appeared to be “suspicious” to someone?

ANSWER During the flight I didn’t get out of my seat at all. I read, and I slept on and off and I played a game on my phone — in airplane mode. And umm, that’s it, really. Looked out the window a couple of times to see where we were.

Q. And your seatmates, did you notice anything “suspicious” about them?

A. I didn’t talk to them at all. I don’t actually even remember making eye contact with them other than when I was walking to my seat to get on the plane, and they were already there by the time I got there. When I was being questioned, they asked me a lot of questions about whether I noticed the men getting up to go to the bathroom, were they gone for a long period of time, did I notice how many times they were up. I do remember them getting up at least once, definitely one time. You know, it’s a little foggy whether they got up other times. I wasn’t really paying very close attention. And I don’t know how long they were gone. How much attention do you really pay to your seatmates if you’re not really engaged with them?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/us/ohio-woman-describes-becoming-a-suspicious-person.html?ref=us

[qb]

1. This is the result of the previous administration's "Fear the Brown People" campaign.

[GESICC]

2. I can't believe this is for real

But there you are in black and white. My own personal experience is interesting-I saw a man who looked like UBL, not dressed like you see on TV, but a dead ringer for him, tried to report it, and got deferred for three days by the CIAs terrorist hot line, as opposed to being taken very serious by police-they did tell me he wasn't carrying a bomb for that I am grateful. (I know, I know- he was in Afghanistan, but we didn't know that then.)
Then I think of the time I looked out my plane window, and there was the Pentagon, not a hundred feet away...