Flying While Brown
Soshana Hebshi
The blogsphere chattered a bit about in incident on 9/11 when 2 F-16’s were scrambled to trail an Airbus flying from Denver to Detroit. Two men and a women were pulled off in handcuffs after a SWAT team boarded the plane and instructed all the passengers to keep their hands on the seat in front and their heads down.
The passengers were later released after the Department of Homeland Security said there was not threat and nothing had happened. Specualtion ran rampant that the passengers had been having sex in a lavatory, while at least one wingnut site claimed that the passengers were conducting a terrorist “dry run”,
Today, the female passenger, Soshana Hebshi, wrote about what happened to her. She is half Saudi and half Jewish, and a housewife and mother. Up until the moment the SWAT team gabbed her on the airplane, she had no idea what was happening or why she was under arrest. Left handcuffed in a cell without being allowed to call anybody or use a bathroom, she was also strip searched and forced to submit to a cavity search, still without any explanation why she was under arrest. The other two passengers, Indian men who had apparently used the bathroom “too often” shared a similar fate.
I thought about Abu Ghraib and the horror to which those prisoners were exposed. I thought about my dad and his prescience. I was glad he wasn’t alive to know about what was happening to me. I thought about my kids, and what would have happened if they had been there when I got taken away. I contemplated never flying again. I thought about the incredible waste of taxpayer dollars in conducting an operation like this. I wondered what my rights were, if I had any at all. Mostly, I could not believe I was sitting in some jail cell in some cold, undisclosed building surrounded by ‘the authorities.’
I heard the officers discuss my impending strip search. They needed to bring in a female officer. At least they were following protocol, or something to that nature. Still, could this really be happening?
Eventually a female uniformed officer came in. She looked like a fat Jada Pinkett Smith, and in a kind but firm voice explained what was going to happen. I was to stand, face the wall in a position so the camera above the toilet couldn’t see, and take off my clothes. I complied.
‘You understand why we have to do this, right? It’s for our own protection,’ she told me.
Because I am so violent. And pulling me off an airplane, handcuffing me and patting me down against a squad car didn’t offer enough protection. They also needed to make sure all my orifices were free and clear.
She apologized for having to do the strip search, and I asked her to tell me what was going on. She said she didn’t know but someone would come and talk to me. She put my handcuffs back on and left. The other officer stood guard outside. I told him I needed to call my husband. He said I could use the phone later.
Read the rest for yourself.
My two cents?
1. The moment they put handcuffs on her, she should have insisted on an attorney and not answered anything until one was present. If the police have you in handcuffs (and leave you in handcuffs for hours even in a cell) and then strip search you and stick fingers into your cavitiies against your will, they are not there to be your friends. Innocent people can say things that still get them into bad trouble, and you have no idea what thing may be. Best not to say anything and insist on representation.
2. If we are going to start scrambling fighter jets and arresting entire rows of passengers because a man with brown skin used the lavatory once too often, then we can pack it in and call it a day as far as being a free country goes. The “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” does not shit its’ collective pants over a guy having stomach trouble or an overactive bladder.
3. The airline and Homeland Security owe Soshana Hebshid and the other two passengers more then an apology. If anybody wants to claim that they were “just doing their job”, my response is “That sounds better in the original German.” We used to be better than this.