- A simple, if frightening, account on an obscure American
website of a plane flight has become something else in the paranoid world
of post-9/11 air travel. Annie Jacobsen's tale of flying to Los Angeles
with 14 'Middle Eastern-looking' men quickly generated a storm of controversy.
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- It prompted airline whistleblowers to come forward with
lurid tales of lapses in security against terrorists. It threw a spotlight
on rumours and warnings of terrorists carrying out 'dry runs' for future
hijackings.
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- But it also revealed an unpleasant underbelly of fear
and loathing among ordinary passengers terrified of seeing a dark-skinned
male face board their plane. It showed a world in which passengers saw
terrorists around every corner and an innocent band of Arab musicians going
to play a gig were mistaken for suicidal jihadis intent on mayhem.
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- For Jacobsen, a writer for a finance and lifestyle website,
the sight of six Middle Eastern-appearing men waiting for her Northwest
Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles was not an initial source
of concern.
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- But when the men boarded, she noticed eight others were
also getting on. It is then that Jacobsen's controversial account takes
on the tone of a cheap airport thriller. Jacobsen noticed that, although
seated in different places, all the men knew each other. 'We watched as,
one by one, most of the Middle Eastern men made eye contact with each other.
They con tinued to look at each other and nod, as if they were all in agreement
about something,' she wrote.
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- Things soon went from bad to worse. Jacobsen described
how the men began making frequent trips to the lavatory. One took a paper
bag inside and then emerged without it. The men would congregate in groups.
One man, in a dark suit and wearing sunglasses, was seated in first class
in the seat closest to the cockpit door.
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- Jacobsen said she smiled at one of the men, whom she
had exchanged pleasantries with while boarding. 'The man did not smile
back. In fact, the cold, defiant look he gave me sent shivers down my spine,'
she said.
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- Soon other passengers were scared too. The pilot was
informed, flight attendants wrote notes to each other and Jacobsen's husband
was assured by one of them that air marshals were monitoring the group.
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- Just as the plane was cleared to land, seven of the men
jumped up to go to the lavatory at the same time. One female passenger
began to cry as the men entered the toilet one by one. In Jacobsen's own
words: 'The last man came out of the bathroom, and as he passed ... he
ran his forefinger across his neck and mouthed the word "No".'
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- The plane then landed safely. As relieved passengers
disembarked the 14 men were shuffled over to one side where they were taken
away for questioning by airport authorities and the police. Jacobsen went
to the FBI. They interviewed her at length. She later found out that the
men had claimed to be musicians. That should have been that.
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- But Jacobsen's account went further. She mentioned reports
she had read, including in The Observer, that detailed the threat from
al-Qaeda operatives conducting 'dry runs' to assemble bombs by placing
their components on planes separately.
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- 'Do I think these men were musicians? I'll let you decide,'
Jacobsen's story concluded. 'But I wonder, if 19 terrorists can learn to
fly airplanes into buildings, couldn't 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?'
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- Jacobsen's account was an instant hit. her magazine website,
Womenswallstreet.com, was soon getting 100 times its normal amount of hits.
The story spread rapidly and pilots, air stewards and air marshals began
contacting her.
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- They told of terrorist hit squads testing the airline's
security system. 'The terrorists are probing us all the time,' said Gary
Boettcher, a director at the Allied Pilots Association. An American Airlines
pilot, Mark Bogosian, said terrorist dry runs were the 'dirty little secret'
of the industry. Many painted a picture of a security system incapable
of spotting potential terrorists. Details of other 'dry runs' emerged,
including one on a flight to New York in February that prompted an FBI
probe.
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- But there was one problem in Jacobsen's account. The
14 men claiming to be musicians were, in fact, exactly that. Nour Mehana,
a well-known Syrian singer, had been travelling on the plane along with
his entire backing band.
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- James Cullen of Athem Artists confirmed that Mehana and
the band were on the same flight as Jacobsen. The band went on to play
a gig on the outskirts of San Diego.
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- Mehana, who plays a mix of traditional and modern Arab
music, is well known in the Middle East. It is likely that he was the man
Jacobsen saw sitting in first class wearing sunglasses. Jacobsen says she
does not recognise Mehana or any of the band members.
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- The whole incident has outraged many Arab and American
civil rights groups. 'It is judging someone by their skin colour or their
religion. It has become par for the course in the post-9/11 era,' said
Ibrahim Hooper, a director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
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- The furore comes at a time when the FBI has launched
an operation to interview hundreds of Muslims and Arabs in America as part
of an attempt to discover a possible terrorist attack. However, some civil
rights groups say the move stigmatises all Muslims.
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- Critics have accused Jacobsen of creating a drama out
of what turned out to be an uneventful flight in the company of a well-known
Syrian band, some of whom go to the toilet a lot. Patrick Smith, a well-known
columnist on aviation said her piece was 'spring-loaded with mindless hysterics
and bigoted provocation' and accused her of paranoia.
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- 'The notion that 14 saboteurs ... would boisterously
proceed in and out of a plane lavatory, taking turns to construct a bomb,
is so over-the-top ludicrous it deserves its own comedy sketch ... I half-expected
her to tell me one of the men wore a cardboard sign labelled "terrorist",'
Smith said.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1268802,00.html
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