Wally Bird

So charges are "dropped" but he is still guilty of them.

jphripjah

He's not guilty of a crime, he's just not suitable for entry. That's something CBP determines hundreds or thousands of times every day.
As offended as I am by his arrest for "false statements," I have no problems with this determination.

I wonder if he will sue Officer Wettle-Thompson for her overzealous arrest that led to him being needlessly locked up for a month. Do CBP officers carry professional liability insurance?

Wally Bird

I have a problem with it because to me it smacks of saving face.

Not wanting to look foolish (again) for going ape at the mere sight of a (gasp!) pressure cooker, dismissing the charges saves having to explain in court how innocuous or confused answers got blown out of proportion. Letting him stay in the US would be tantamount to admitting they were wrong; something they would never do.

He can't sue; he's now just glad to be home and won't be coming back. Which makes a lot of people happy, I'm sure.

Letitride3c

Like ^ +1

And I venture to say, likely one new name added to the No Fly List - blacklisted.

Ari

If he does file, it is a losing case; it wouldn't even make it to trial. These charges appear to be a post hoc justification for holding the guy subsequent to a decision to hold him to look into him and his pressure cooker as a reaction to the recent Boston 'man-made disaster'. But that doesn't mean that a clearly-established constitutional right was violated. Subjective motive plays no role in the Fourth Amendment analysis. If it was a deep fryer and the guy was from China with the exact same documents and answers, this probably wouldn't have happened. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong cooking impliment and fits the wrong profile.

cordelli

It always cracks me up how some people will quote something like me asking why can't you buy a pressure cooker in America (since this person clearly said you could not) with totally unrelated stories to prove a point about their families pressure cooker, etc.

I don't care if you carry a pressure cooker in your luggage or not. Nor did I ever say you could not or should not.

The person in this case said they were not available in America when asked why he had it. That was a lie. He didn't say it had value to him, he didn't say it was his grandmothers, he didn't say it was in his family for years.

He had a passport with a page removed. He then said he didn't know how the page was removed, as the passport was locked in a box. He lied about the pressure cooker. He lied about the passport. But I'm sure some people will also have stories about how they locked their passport in a box and next time they went to use it pages were missing.

Gee, it's a shame that customs didn't just accept the fact that the passport elves cut the page out of his book in a locked box and that when he said pressure cookers were not available in America he really meant it was a family heirloom, handed to him from his grandmother made of special metal from a rock only in his native village and just wasn't lying about it all.

Wally Bird

Or two; the nephew as well because You Can't Be Too Careful.
If you have a transcript of the interview, please share it with the rest of us.

If not then...

cordelli

Oh give it a rest.

His lawyer has been doing tons of interviews, and not once has he disputed the claim that he said pressure cookers were not available in America. Indeed, his lawyer actually has said he should have been arrested

Howarth, Al Kwawahir's defense attorney, said he believes the government had no choice but to arrest his client given the information agents had when he entered the U.S.

....

"It's unfortunate that they couldn't clear it up more quickly," Howarth said, noting federal authorities have been cooperative. "The plan has not been, 'Let's go to war.' It's 'Let's see if we can straighten it out.' "

It's a shame that the only place this is apparently an issue, even with his own lawyer, is on Flyertalk.

Wally Bird

Or maybe not.Lookit, we can exchange soundbites ad infinitum but that won't resolve what was actually said or how it was interpreted.

You're right, time to give it a rest as it's over and done; one way or another. We have all the details we're ever going to get .

FlyingHoustonian

As much as you seem to want it to be this thread does not just revolve around you, nor are you the only one that gets to set its tone or direction. Believe it or not other people have engaged in the thread and even asked why someone would want to carry such items. That is what FT is for, such discussions.

BTW, As for the gentlement in question several interviews have noted he purportedly stated pressure cookers were "too expensive" in America. As Wally Bird noted it matters not because nothing else will probably come out about this case.

None of that changes the fact the government seems to have spoken ill of the man to belie possible fecklessness on their part...not shocked by that.

cordelli

Wow that's totally unnecessary. Not unexpected, but unnecessary.

FlyingHoustonian

Wow that's totally unnecessary. Not unexpected, but unnecessary...

GUWonder

.... as with the claim that he lied about his expired passport which he had along with a current passport with no page missing and no unauthorized alterations.

There is no evidence of his having lied about his passports; and any claim about lying about the pressure cooker is of doubtful merit given the lack of prosecutorial willingness to pursue charges of doubtful merit.

Don't worry, the CBP got its way anyway despite overreacting about a pressure cooker. The Saudi man lost a good chunk of money and had a bad experience to boot at that. I doubt his children are going to all be our national fans after the experience of their father -- and so the anti-virtuous cycle of irrational suspicion and perhaps worse will continue.

WillCAD

I won't argue about the passport. It had pages removed, and I'm sure the man knew when how they were removed, whether he did it himself or whether it was done by some dodgy government in a country he entered or exited.I don't know whether he lied about it because the truth would have embarassed him (perhaps his wife ripped them out, or perhaps his kids ripped them out, which would have made him look like less of a man because he can't control his woman and his children), or because the truth would have implicated him in some terrorist plot to blow up a pressure cooker bomb at the World Series or Super Bowl.

However, the whole, "He lied about pressure cookers being available in America!" thing is utter nonsense, as far as I'm concerned.

All of the articles I've read state that the man's words were something along the lines of, "You can't get these in America." Morons assumed that he meant You can't get any kind of pressure cookers at all anywhere in America ever. But it's far more likely that what he meant was This particular brand or This particular model or This particular style of pressure cooker isn't available in America.

I have an Aussie friend who drives a car that runs on liquid propane. I once remarked to her, "We don't have those in America." Was I lying? Did I mean, "We don't have automobiles of any kind anywhere in America"? Or did I mean "We don't have cars that run on LPG in America." Hm... conundrum...

And even if he did mean that he thought that you couldn't get any kind of pressure cooker any where in America ever, why would anyone assume that's a lie and not simply a mistaken impression? I once tried to hand my credit card to the server at Ihop, even though you pay at the register instead of paying the server. Was I lying to the Ihop server about where you pay at Ihop? No; I was mistaken.

FlyingHoustonian

Because many a frontline CBP agent has never left the country (irony...) and fewer have to any places that are, should we say, "exotic"...like using a non-Latin alphabet.

There are good, cultured CBP agents who are well travelled and do a good job understanding foreigners. Many others, especially as the agency enlarged fairly quickly recently, that are drawn from a different pool of applicants. They just don't get the cultural mores and language needs of outsiders.

It is like how they deal with people that do not speak English. They are not deaf so yelling English at them will not help but some agents do it anyway and look like buffoons doing it.

Maybe if they all had to pass the foreign service exam before hiring it would help matters...or a scaled down version.

There is an organizational cultural that must change too (but it will not). For example, when I did my initial Global Entry interview 5 years ago, way back when it started at just three airports and the agents were just figuring the system out, I got all these lectures on how they were keeping the country safe from "the bad guys". The very first thing the agent said to me when I sat down and said how are you was 'Another day trying to keep the bad guys out of the country, that is what we do'.

I had been instantly approved and the actual interview was fairly short but I got at least ten minutes of anecdotes on the "War" they fight everyday