ARABIC FLASHCARDS LAND STUDENT IN U.S. DETENTION
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
By Jon Hurdle
Reuters
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Philadelphia (Reuters) - Federal agents detained and interrogated a
U.S. college student at the Philadelphia airport simply because we
was carrying a set of English-Arabic flashcards, a lawsuit alleged on
Wednesday.
The American Civil Liberties Union said it filed the suit on behalf
Nicholas George, 22, a language student at Pomona College in
California who was held at Philadelphia International Airport for
nearly five hours in August 2009.
George, a U.S. citizen from the Philadelphia suburb of Wyncote, was
on his way back to college when airport security officers found him
carrying the flashcards, each of which had an English word on one
side and its Arabic equivalent on the other, the ACLU said.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration questioned him, and a
TSA supervisor asked him how he felt about the September 11 attacks,
whether he knew "who did 9/11," and whether he knew what language
Osama bin Laden spoke, the ACLU said.
He was handcuffed and left in a locked cell for two hours before
being "abusively" interrogated by two FBI agents, but was never told
why he was being detained, the ACLU said.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. district court for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania, charges that officers from the TSA, FBI and
Philadelphia police violated George's constitutional rights of free
speech and to be free from unreasonable seizure.
"As someone who travels by plane, I want TSA agents to do their job
to keep flights safe," George said in a statement. "But I don't
understand how locking me up and harassing me just because I was
carrying the flashcards made anybody safer."
Neither the federal agencies nor the Philadelphia police could be
reached for comment.
More at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6195M720100210
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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