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Pilot Forces Arab Men Off Plane
STOCKHOLM, Oct 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Three men of Arab origin were forced to get off a chartered aircraft after the pilot became suspicious of their "motives" for flying, the daily
Dagens Nyheter reported Sunday.
Two of the three men hold Swedish nationality, but are of Egyptian and Iraqi origin. The third man is Iraqi.
Just before taking off on Saturday from Stockholm for Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands, the pilot approached the three men and asked them why they had reserved tickets so late -- on Friday night - and whether they knew each other, the paper reported.
"I said that charter flights are a good deal and that we work together," Ismail Fouda, one of the men, said.
"The pilot said that it was he who made decisions and he wanted us to disembark," Fouda said.
Police were called to the scene and the aircraft took off three hours later after authorities inspected all passports and bags aboard the flight, the paper reported.
"The pilot is king of his plane," a spokesman for Stockholm airport said.
"Normally, people are expelled if they're violent or drunk," he said.
But "to be of Arab origin isn't very easy these days," he added.
The three men plan to file suit against the charter airplane company, Premiair, the paper reported.
A similar case of racial profiling occurred in the U.S. last month when three Arabs were forced to disembark a plane when passengers complained they were "nervous" of flying with Arabs on the plane.
Muslims and Arabs have long been subjected to racial profiling of airports, prompting the U.S. Department of Justice to earmark funds to launch an Federal Aviation Association (FAA) investigation into many U.S. airports' unfair singling out of Muslims and people of Arab descent and the subsequent humiliating mistreatment that results from such profiling.
With additional reporting by Neveen A. Salem
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