WASHINGTON, 26 June 2003 — A Saudi student who three years ago sued a US airline for racial profiling after being ordered off a flight in handcuffs has been taken into custody by the FBI. The FBI arrested Muhammad Al-Qudhaieen, a student at Arizona State University in Tucson, on June 13. His wife, Mohdi Al-Qudhaieen, told reporters that despite her many calls, the FBI would not tell her why he was in custody or where he is being held.
Mrs. Al-Qudhaieen said the Saudi Embassy might be representing her husband. The embassy did not return phone calls to Arab News before going to press.
Deedra Abboud, of the Council on American Islamic Relations, CAIR, in Arizona, told The Arizona Republic that Muhammad Al-Qudhaieen was arrested due to a complaint from Virginia, where federal grand jurors are investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack. She said it was unclear whether he is being held as a material witness or facing criminal charges.
Rabiah Ahmed, CAIR’s communications coordinator in Washington, said it appeared Al-Qudhaieen is being held under the Material Witness statute, although it was unclear if he was being held for a criminal offense or as a material witness.
“It is CAIR’s position that the Material Witness statute should not be abused or enforced arbitrarily. If someone is accused of some wrongdoing, evidence should be produced and the case should be tried openly in court,” she said.
“Instead, many people like Al-Qudhaieen have been detained indefinitely, and sometimes even pressured to agree to things that they don’t want to say or do. Nobody knows why he’s been detained; everything is hidden in secret, which is the problem with the Material Witness statute,” said Ahmed.
Al-Qudhaieen and Hamdan Al-Shalawi, both students at Arizona State University, were handcuffed and removed from an American West flight in Columbus, Ohio in 1999, after a flight attendant said the two men were asking suspicious questions and jiggled the cockpit door. After the event, the two men filed a federal lawsuit claiming they were victims of hysteria and discrimination. The men said they asked normal questions about arrival times and food, and Al-Qudhaieen denied touching the cockpit door while using the passenger rest room located at the front of the plane.
Their lawsuit was dismissed earlier this month. According to their Tucson lawyer Paul Gattone, even if racial profiling had occurred, airline pilots are given free reign when it comes to maintaining safety and security on their planes.
Gattone told The Arizona Republic that Al-Qudhaieen was an “upstanding individual” and said he was stunned to learn of the arrest. “I didn’t know the FBI was pursuing him,” he said.
To further complicate matters, Al-Qudhaieen and Al-Shalawi are acquaintances of Zakaria Soubra, a former Arizona State student who was the focus of an investigation by FBI agent Kenneth Williams. In a pre-Sept. 11 memo Williams, who is based in Phoenix, warned FBI administrators — just two months before the attacks — that Middle Eastern aviation students should be scrutinized as potential terrorist threats.
Soubra was then arrested for a visa violation. Although never charged with a criminal offense, he was deported to Lebanon last month after testifying under immunity. He insisted he did not have any connections to terrorists, did not know anything about the Sept. 11 attacks, and said FBI “paranoia” ruined his life.
