steve65341

I wish these kind of stories would make it into the mainstream media more !

http://varnull.adityamukerjee.net/po...during-ramadan

TheOneTheOnly

Why would any American consent to this? They threatened to steal his bag if he didn't just bend over and take it! Then all kinds of personal information was forced out of him, information we are repeatedly told to guard lest we be victim of identify theft! On top of all of that, for hours he was held in a small room, denied basic human necessities, denied counsel, and his apartment broken into! Heck, even if for some idiotic reason I was in that situation and allowed the circus to continue up to the point where the airline denied me flight, I would have shut up demanding to be charged or released and refusing to cooperate further. There is NO EXCUSE for any of this!

Darkumbra

This is nothing to worry about.
This is not a nation of skittish idiots.
Move along now Citizen.

srirams

It's sad that I have to write this and even worse that I genuinely believe it, but I don't think they would have brought him a lawyer if he had asked for one, nor would they have stopped with the questioning. If anything they probably would have switched to "enhanced" interrogation techniques if he had stopped cooperating.

studentff

I hope he doesn't just let this go. He needs to talk to a lawyer. And then the media. The thugs who did this to him, all of them, need to be made to suffer. At least public humiliation via name and shame, preferably financial harm though that is extremely unlikely. But name and shame would do it. If the DHS and FBI and TSA folks wives and kids were spit on in public for being related to such scum, the DHS, FBI, and TSA folks would reconsider their profession and their professional behavior.

Personally I think he should have refused to continue answering questions until he was given water, or just outright start refusing to answer questions, but i wasn't there.

saulblum

He lives in the city. JetBlue's headquarters is over in Queens.

At the very least he should take the airline to small claims court for recompense of the last-minute flight booking, after denying him boarding when he was "cleared" (and I use that term loosely) by the "authorities" (again, loosely used).

exbayern

This is one of the most clear, unemotional, presentations of FWB I have seen.

Unfortunately, if this gets into the media and on most travel fora, I suspect that most Americans would be on side with the FBI agent. Others will think 'that would never happen to me as I am white and Christian and American'

Look at how many FTers think that Turkey is in the Middle East, and thus a bad/scary place to visit.

The story is especially shocking for anyone with a basic knowledge of Hinduism.

chgoeditor

I haven't seen any media coverage yet, but this is a guy who's savvy about social media and the story got a lot of traction on Facebook and Twitter yesterday. Appalling...just disgusting.

alex_b

Village Voice (NY newspaper) has it on their blogs section. Jet Blue have been handling it very badly on Twitter.

EDIT and Gawker

srirams

I think the worst behavior is by the airline, Jet Blue. The behavior of the "authorities" is generally what one would expect (rude and heavy-handed), but the paranoia of the airlines really takes it to another level.

chgoeditor

I try to avoid being an "everything's a conspiracy" person, so I'm curious about people's opinion re. his apartment claims--items were moved and a picture disappeared. I discount the fact that he thinks a bag was in a different place than he left it (which he says is a matter of inches) but the picture thing is weird. Even if you're exhausted from moving, etc., I can't imagine how you'd incorrectly remember hanging a picture on the wall. So what do you think: Did he remember incorrectly, do you think someone other than the government (landlord or burglar) entered his apartment, or do you think the government actually went in there?

exbayern

I think that the picture was likely perceived as another brown person in a religious picture, and removed for investigation, and subsequently was not returned due to oversight or less likely due to intimidation.

Click on the link in his story for 'pronam' and see the pictures of all these evil brown people with evil intent. There is so much appalling ignorance in this story that I can well see someone thinking that they found 'proof' of his intentions with that picture.

alex_b

It has now been picked up by the Daily Mail in the UK, which has the most read news website (I believe). This is likely to go mainstream, Jet Blue are still sticking by their story.

It has shades of the US Air offloading of the Muslim passengers a few years ago. I hope that the courts get involved.

chgoeditor

But the picture was hanging on his apartment wall--not on his person/in his luggage at the airport. You think the government broke into his apartment (presumably without a search warrant) and took a picture from the wall?

exbayern

Well they asked him the question about parking on the left or the right, so they were apparently trying to verify the basic information he gave them. I don't know if I believe that they did go into his apartment, and perhaps he'll find the picture months later in some odd place that he himself placed it, but it is all very odd indeed. Perhaps they checked the parking question on Google maps, or perhaps they sent someone there to check from the street.