Khairuldeen Makhzoomi says he was unfairly removed from a flight at Los Angeles International Airport because a fellow passenger was alarmed by an innocent conversation he was having in Arabic. Picture: AP / Haven Daley
A UNIVERSITY student who was booted off a flight after a passenger became alarmed hearing him speak in Arabic did nothing wrong, police in the United States have said.
The FBI stepped in to investigate University of California student Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, 26, after he was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and taken for questioning on April 9.
Mr Makhzoomi, who came to the US as an Iraqi refugee, had boarded the flight from Los Angeles to Oakland, California, and was speaking on the phone with his uncle to tell him about a speech he had just attended by United National Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, raising the suspicion of a fellow passenger.
“I was very excited about the event, so I called my uncle to tell him about it,” Mr Makhzoomi told the New York Times.
Mr Makhzoomi said he made a passing comment about the Islamic State terror group when describing the speech, and had also used the Arabic phrase “inshallah,” which means “god willing”, during the conversation.
He believes this is what caused alarm and prompted an Arabic-speaking Southwest employee to escort him off the plane.
Southwest Airlines said the man could not get back on the flight. Picture: Eddie MaloneySource:Flickr
The employee asked Mr Makhzoomi why he was speaking in Arabic and he replied: “This is what Islamophobia got this country into”.
The comment made the employee angry and he was not allowed back on the plane, Makhzoomi said.
But a spokesman for LAX police says officers have concluded Mr Makhzoomi did nothing wrong.
Officer Rob Pedregon of the Los Angeles World Airports Police Department said officers from his department and FBI agents spoke to Mr Makhzoomi after the incident.
“The statement he made was not illegal, there was nothing that involved threats or anything like that so he was released,” he said.
He said airport police consider the case closed.
But the case has whipped up anger about what many people believe is the unfair targeting of Muslim air passengers.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations said it was concerned about what it sees as a trend of Muslims being profiled and having their flights disrupted in the US.
Tahera Ahmad was infamously not allowed to open a can of Diet Coke on a United Airlines flight in case she used it as a weapon. Picture: FacebookSource:Supplied
Last week, a Muslim woman of Somali descent was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight at Chicago airport because a flight attendant “didn’t feel comfortable” with her on the plane.
Earlier this month, a Muslim-American married couple and their two young children were kicked off a flight from Chicago to Washington DC “for security reasons” after they asked for an extra strap for their youngest child’s safety seat.
“We are tired of Muslim-looking passengers being removed from flights for the flimsiest reasons, under a cryptic claim of ‘security’,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations’s executive director Ahmed Rehab said in response to that incident.
In May last year, on a United flight from Chicago to Washington DC operated by Shuttle America, a flight attendant allegedly told Muslim woman Tahera Ahmad she could not open her own can of Diet Coke in case she used it as a weapon.
The incident sparked the viral hashtag #UnitedforTahera and a boycott against United Airlines that ended when the airline issued a formal apology a week later.
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