On Sunday, when three Middle Eastern men were detained under suspicious circumstances and without proper ID at the Port of Miami, I wrote:

UPDATE at 1/7/07 1:50:14 pm:

If it turns out to be a false alarm, expect the Council on American Islamic Relations to jump all over it as another case of the dreaded “Islamophobia.”

UPDATE at 1/7/07 2:20:11 pm:

Yep, false alarm. Nothing unusual in the truck. The countdown to CAIR’s claims of victimhood begins now.

Man, I hate being right all the time. It took CAIR two days to properly rehearse the show.

3 Men Cleared In Port Scare ‘Treated Like Animals’.

MIAMI — Three Middle Eastern men who were arrested and later had charges against them dropped over a brief terrorism scare at the Port of Miami on Sunday said they were unfairly targeted because of their ethnicity and creed.

Amar Al-Hadad said he was “humiliated, disrespected (and) treated real badly just because my name is an Arabic name and I’m a Muslim.”

The Iraqi-born Al-Hadad cried during the Monday news conference in which he described the way he, his brother, Hussain Al Hadad, and friend, Hassan El Sayed, were treated. “We were treated like animals,” El Sayed said.

Officials initially said the men, all permanent U.S. residents, had been caught trying to slip past a checkpoint at the port’s entrance. The truck’s contents — electrical automotive parts in a 40-foot container — matched the driver’s cargo manifest, said Miami-Dade police spokeswoman Nancy Goldberg.

A port security officer became suspicious when Amar Al Hadad could not produce proper paperwork in a routine inspection to enter the port at about 8 a.m., Goldberg said. He also indicated he was alone in the truck, though security officers found Hussain Al Hadad and El Sayed in the cab, she said.

But the Dearborn, Mich., men said that was not the way it happened. “Me and him were sitting right there … I mean, I was in the passenger seat,” Hussain Al-Hadad said. “I must be invisible.”

Amar and Hussain Al Hadad were both charged with resisting arrest; Hussain Al Hadad was also charged with trespassing, as was El Sayed, a Lebanese national. A judge dismissed the charges, citing a lack of evidence.

Amar Al-Hadad said his driver’s license hadn’t been returned and wasn’t sure which law enforcement agency had it. The three men were detained by the FBI and released before being charged by the Miami-Dade Police Department.

“We demand the return of those IDs as soon as possible so that they can go about their lives in a normal fashion,” said Areeb Naseer, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The three men said they were considering filing a lawsuit.