Posted on 11/01/2007 7:15:59 PM PDT by Libloather
Arabic-speaking passengers sue American
The Associated Press
DETROIT --Six men of Iraqi descent who were flying home after a stint training Marines sued American Airlines on Thursday, saying employees publicly humiliated them after a passenger expressed concerns about them to security guards.
The men, who sued in U.S. District Court in Detroit alleging racial discrimination, say airline employees grounded their Aug. 28 flight from San Diego to Chicago and detained them, believing they were security risks.
The men, some of whom are U.S. citizens, were returning to the Detroit area after training Marines at Camp Pendleton in California when another passenger expressed concerns to guards partly because she heard the men speaking Arabic.
After taxiing from the gate, pilots returned the plane to the terminal. The six men were segregated and detained while the airline helped more than 100 passengers find hotel rooms, according to a prepared statement from the men.
The suit was filed on behalf of David Al-Watan, Talal Cholagh, Ali Alzerej, Hassan Alzerej, Hussein Alsalih and Mohammad Al-Saedy.
"They treated me like a terrorist," Al-Watan, 30, said in the statement. "We didn't do anything wrong, but they made everybody scared of us."
Flight 590's crew returned the plane to the gate to resolve potential security problems, airline spokesman Tim Wagner said in a statement.
"All passengers disembarked the aircraft after it was determined that it would not be able to redepart because of San Diego International Airport's 11:30 p.m. flight curfew," Wagner said. "Several passengers were briefly interviewed by law enforcement officers. No passenger was arrested."
The six men took flights with the airline the next morning, Wagner said.
The men worked for Defense Training Systems, a unit of International Logistics Services Corp. of Anchorage, Alaska.
We need to find a way to sue terrorists. We really do...
I’m told they have video on the planes. Maybe we could see what was happening and decide for ourselves?
I really don’t think their lawsuit will carry much weight given the climate today with terrorists.
I can’t find anything in the constitution that guarantees the right not to be offended.
Even muslims em[ployed by our own government walk around with a chip on their shoulders.
They should sue Saudi Arabia for financing the terrorism that leads to suspicion of muslims.
I'm surprised Defense Training Systems doesn't have their own private equipment to transport their workers.
If I looked different, then I would just have to be very patient with people.
It would suck being misunderstood, but I wouldn't sue people over it.
Terrorist: "They pissed me off."
Lawyer: "You may have a case..."
The people to blame for this are your a$$hole bretheren who have been hijacking airplanes and blowing people up for the last fifty years. Take it up with them.
How about they can file suit if they agree that the next time somebody doesn’t report their suspicions because they are afraid of getting sued, and that failure leads to a terrorist act, the families of the victims get to sue them.
I am guessing that the 9/11 terrorists spoke English the entire time prior to hijacking the planes.
Earth to you. That only covers Government vs people and sometimes employees and landlords.
A private business can refuse to serve you for any reason, or for no reason, as it sees fit.
I have outright refused to train a few people that I am uncomfortable with. - Or that I just don’t like the look of, for that matter. And I made no bones about it, either.
I am a flight instructor. - And this lawsuit involves my tagline.
What are these guys training our Marines on?
The airline employees erred on the side of safety and at a time of war.
If these guys have been vetted and approved to provide training to our Marines at Camp Pendleton, I’m inclined to back them. And if the plane was really turned around and passengers taken off and forced to stay overnight and fly out the next day, all because some dimwit went into a tizzy when she heard men speaking Arabic, the other 100+ passengers ought to be suing too.
This doesn’t sound anything like the case of the infamous “flying imams”, whose behavior was bizarre enough to disturb a large number of passengers as well as some of the crew members who interacted with them. This sounds more like a case of stupid overreaction (probably in accordance with some stupid policies set by the government and/or airlines), that ends up handing the terrorists a lot more power than they really have, to disrupt our lives and economy.
I thought congress passed something that prevented this type of sueing after the flying iman problem. We want passengers to be suspicious. Too bad if they feel like terrorists.
Unfortunately you are completely wrong. It's a nice thought, and you would expect as much in a free country, but you are wrong.
Think about it this way. Can a restaurant refuse to serve blacks?
That’s how it should be, per the Constitution, but it’s not current law for any public accommodation or conveyance. And in many states, even your private flight instruction activities would be subject to broad anti-discrimination laws.
There’s more to the story:
One flight attendant told investigators the behavior of the group made him nervous and was “making his hair stand on end.”
He said that one of the men went into the bathroom and when he came out he stood next to a woman and stared at her for three to four minutes. That passenger got off the plane.
The flight attendant also said that another man in the group began to stare at him in an “abnormal, unusual and intense” way. When he mentioned that to the other attendants, they each said they felt they were being stared at in the same fashion.
“It was like each of these (Arabic) passengers had their assigned attendant,” Kotsonis said.
Another flight attendant told investigators he had “a gut feeling and discomfort” and “needed to do something” after one of the men put a blanket on his head during the safety demonstration only to take it off and stare angrily at everyone around him.
After the passenger got off the plane, the crew talked among themselves and decided to notify the pilot about their concerns.
The pilot said in the report that this was the first time in 20 years of flying that a crew had indicated such feelings to him.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1918613/posts
Probably Arabic language, which is something our military and intelligence forces have great need of these days.
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