Two Yemeni travelers, one of them is former metro Detroit residents were officially released from the custody of Dutch officials and cleared of all potential wrongdoing on Wednesday after what’s being called a mix-up over personal items in their luggage on a flight from Chicago to Amsterdam.
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| “The feeling after hearing what happened on the news was anger at the media and authorities for letting misinformation out and scaring the public and disturbing the families, the media was reckless,” said Yassar al Soofi of Dearborn, Ahmed al Soofi’s cousin. |
“The feeling after hearing what happened on the news was anger at the media and authorities for letting misinformation out and scaring the public and disturbing the families, the media was reckless,” said Yassar al Soofi of Dearborn, Ahmed al Soofi’s cousin.
Yassar al Soofi and local family members believe that the media speculation of the case as a potential terror situation could be damaging to their reputation and a situation that will be difficult to recover from.
“The media was irresponsible and so was the DHS (Department of Homeland Security), especially the national media. First of all, you shouldn’t post a name without knowing what’s going on, it puts the family’s safety in jeopardy and you risk your investigation. It hurts the family and hurts our name, if he has to apply for a job, all they remember is that he was accused of being a terrorist for five minutes,” he said, adding that family members were traumatized by the incident, especially considering they had no contact with Ahmed al Soofi until he was finally released on Wednesday.
The incident began after airport security scanners in Birmingham, Alabama noticed items in al Soofi’s luggage including a cell phone taped to a Pepto-Bismol bottle, watches taped together, and a box cutter and knives that were deemed potentially suspicious. All of the items are permitted for airplane luggage, however.
Yassar al Soofi said that the electronic items were likely gifts for family members back home in Yemen.
They were taken into custody at Schiphol Airport at the request of U.S. officials according to reports on Monday before being released two days later after questioning.
The two men missed their connecting flights to Washington, D.C. and were re-booked to Amsterdam from Chicago, but the luggage continued on the original path.
It was reported by multiple sources that they did not know each other and were held in separate cells during the investigation.
Following the incident, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) expressed concern over its handling.
The ADC said it recognizes the importance of national security but added that it should not come at expense of basic freedoms including racial or ethnic profiling while also calling on the national media to avoid such tactics while practicing restraint in their reporting, which the ADC said has a negative effect on the perceptions of Arabs and Muslims in America and abroad as communities.
Yassar al Soofi said that the problem with such reports is that the damage is often irreversible.
“The local media usually does a good job but no apologies are ever made on the national media, they don’t go back and say this was a mistake, they just let it go,” he said. “That’s the problem, we don’t have investigative journalism anymore, we just have entertainment.”
Congress of Arab American Organizations Spokesman and Publisher of The Arab American News Osama Siblani agreed.
“This was nothing but hype that had no base, and any engagement with the media (from Arab American leaders) is just satisfying their appetite for ‘news’ like this, there should be nothing to talk about,” he said after being contacted by numerous local, national, and international media outlets and declining to comment.
In response to the incident, the ADC has requested a clarification and explanation from the DHS as to whether the national origin of the passengers played a role in the notification of Dutch authorities leading to the detentions.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) adopted a “flight pattern” criteria in April after removing a list of countries from their guidelines for increased scrutiny in searches that included Yemen; the ADC is seeking information about whether or not the flight path and final destination to Yemen taken by the two men factored into the decision to have them detained.
“We have requested on several occasions a clear explanation of what the travel pattern means and we have never received a clear-cut answer,” said ADC-Michigan Regional Director Imad Hamad. “This brings the question to the forefront and we’re wondering if what happened with these people was simply alarmed by weird packaging of the items or more of a travel pattern index the DHS put in effect.”
Hamad also said that the department should be more clear about what exactly constitutes suspicious packaging of items that would cause a person to potentially be detained, as much confusion currently exists.
Abdul Hakem AlSadah, the honorary consul of Yemen in Detroit, said that the two men had clean records and were not on any sort of watch list while strongly questioning the coverage that led to complaints of stereotyping from the local Yemeni American community.
“The members of the community at-large are all disappointed and dismayed about the rush to judgment here and the exaggeration about these items and the way they were packaged or wrapped,” he said.
“These two men are people who are known to be respected family men…and law enforcement and media under the political climate we’re in currently with the increase of anti-Arab and Muslim sentiment, this becomes an issue of concern.
“We want our government to do their job and not take anything lightly but that does not have to constitute the extremes that we saw in this case.”
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