An Ohio woman said Tuesday that she endured nearly four hours in police custody that included being forced off an airplane in handcuffs, strip-searched and interrogated at Detroit's airport on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks — all, she believes, because of her Middle Eastern appearance.
Hebshi said she didn't notice how many times the men went to the bathroom. "I wasn't keeping track," she said.Shoshana Hebshi, 35, told The Associated Press she was one of three people removed from a Denver-to-Detroit Frontier Airlines flight after landing Sunday afternoon. Authorities say fighter jets escorted the plane after its crew reported that two people were spending a long time in a bathroom — the two men sitting next to Hebshi in the 12th row."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."The FBI has said the three didn't know each other. One man felt ill and got up to use the restroom and another man in the same row also left his seat to go to the bathroom. The FBI said they never were inside together.Hebshi has written extensively on her blog about the incident, saying she felt "violated, humiliated and sure that I was being taken from the plane simply because of my appearance."
Her Twitter posts from Sunday bear that out. At one point, she wrote: "A little concerned about this situation. Plane moved away from terminal surrounded by cops. Crew is mum. Passengers can't get up."Hebshi, who describes herself as half-Arabic, half-Jewish with a dark complexion, told the AP after they landed, she noticed police first surrounding, then storming the plane. She said she was surprised when they stopped at her row and ordered her and the men to get up.Later she wrote, "I see stairs coming our way...yay!" Her last post said, "Majorly armed cops coming aboard."It's then that she says the officers ordered her and the men, whom she described as Indian, to get up.She said she was patted down and taken by car to a holding cell. A uniformed female officer eventually came in and told Hebshi to take off her clothes.After the strip search, another officer who identified herself as a Homeland Security agent led Hebshi to another room, Hebshi said. There, a man who identified himself as an FBI agent asked her a series of questions while a female agent took notes, Hebshi said.Hebshi said that when she asked what was going on, the male agent told her someone on the plane reported that she and the men on her row were "conducting suspicious activity."FBI spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold said the three passengers were questioned but not arrested before the FBI determined there was no reason to suspect or hold them. She also said FBI agents who questioned the passengers were not involved in any strip searches."We received a report of suspicious activity on that particular plane," Berchtold said. "We did not arrest ... these passengers. ... We didn't direct anybody to arrest them."Airport police are under the supervision of the Wayne County Airport Authority, which operates Detroit Metropolitan Airport.In an email to the AP, agency spokesman Scott Wintner said airport police "responded appropriately by following protocol and treating everyone involved with respect and dignity.
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