Shoshana Hebshi said she believed she was targeted because of the colour of her skin
A 35-year-old housewife from the American midwest has given a nightmarish account of being hauled out of her plane seat without warning, handcuffed, strip-searched and detained for hours along with her immediate seatmates – all because an unidentified fellow passenger thought she looked suspicious and it was the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Shoshana Hebshi, who is of part-Saudi, part-Jewish descent, said she believed the three of them were targeted solely because of the colour of their skin. She and her Indian seatmates were unacquainted before the flight, hardly spoke before they landed, and did nothing more disruptive than get up occasionally to use the toilet.
Hebshi's account, which began as a post at her personal blog, triggered an outcry against the airline, the FBI and the US homeland security establishment. As the story spread across the internet, it attracted comment from law enforcement veterans, constitutional lawyers and outraged fellow citizens, who saw her story as an encapsulation of much that has gone wrong in the US over the past 10 years.
"This is what it looks like when 'the terrorists win' and we lose the long-term struggle to protect a free society," James Fallows of the Atlantic wrote.
Hebshi, who lives in a suburb of Toledo, Ohio, was travelling from Denver to Detroit, thinking the September 11 anniversary would be a less busy day to fly. When an unidentified fellow passenger expressed alarm at the time her neighbours in row 12 were spending in the toilet, the pilot alerted the control tower, which alerted the entire national security establishment.
A military escort kept track of the Frontier Airlines flight as it neared Detroit. On the ground, the plane moved away from the gate to a remote part of the airfield. A Swat team then stormed the plane, cuffed Hebshi and her neighbours, and hauled them off for questioning in an airport holding facility.
At first, Hebshi was not told why she was being held, despite her repeated questions. The FBI arrived, ordered a full body search and quizzed her on every aspect of her relatively mundane life: her travels to Venezuela in 2001, her journalism training, her marriage, and her six-year-old twins. When it became clear she was blameless, she was released.
"It's 9/11 and people are seeing ghosts," one FBI agent told her. "They are seeing things that aren't there." He said they had to respond to the report of suspicious behaviour, "and this is what the reaction looks like".
Constitutional lawyers and law enforcement veterans were appalled, however, saying Hebshi and the others had a good case to claim illegal arrest. Hebshi was meeting lawyers from the Michigan branch of the American Civil Liberties Union to weigh her options.
"We are deeply concerned by the trauma and humiliation she [Hebshi] felt and suffered at the hands of law enforcement," ACLU spokeswoman Rana Elmir said.
"Law enforcement actions and decisions must be reasonable and must be credible, not based on stereotypes and appearance. We can all agree the arrest, the strip search and detention of an innocent mother of two was not reasonable or necessary," Elmir said.
Erwin Chemerinsky, one of the country's leading constitutional scholars, said the episode was a clear violation of the constitutional ban on unreasonable search and seizure. "Neither the Patriot Act, nor any other law, can override the fourth amendment," he said. "This sounds clearly to be an unconstitutional arrest; they were put in cuffs and there does not seem to be probable cause."
Hebshi was told by the FBI that hers was one of dozens of similar episodes that occurred the same day. She was also told about an incident last December when agents spent six hours interviewing every passenger on a plane before letting them go.
An FBI spokesman in Detroit justified the response, saying: "The public would rather us err on the side of caution than not."
However, an FBI veteran with broad experience in public security issues, said the bureau's job was to follow the law, not public opinion. The veteran, who did not wish to be named because he only knew what he had read in the media, said the appropriate response would have been to take the passengers in row 12 off the plane first, question them individually and then let them go.
Such questioning sessions are known as Terry stops, after a 1968 Supreme Court case, and the guiding principal, the veteran said, is to minimize any inconvenience or restriction on the suspects.
"The key is to have a measured and reasonable response," he said. "Anyone looking at this would say it was neither measured nor reasonable."
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