No 'Hanky Panky' in Airline Scares: FBI

But strip-search and detention infuriates innocent Ohio housewife
By Mary Papenfuss,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 13, 2011 1:15 AM CDT
No 'Hanky Panky' in Airline Scares: FBI
Heavily armed cops walk alongside an American Airlines employee as travelers prepare to board flights at the American terminal at Los Angeles International Airport on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.   (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

Fighter-jet escorts in two airplane security scares on the anniversary of 9/11 were not caused by hanky panky in the bathrooms, according to FBI officials. But one American Jewish-Arab housewife is furious after being strip-searched and grilled simply because passengers reported being "concerned" about trips to the bathroom by men sitting next to her. Jets accompanied an American plane headed to New York and a Frontier plane on its way to Detroit Sunday when various passengers' bathroom habits made others nervous. One source told ABC News that two travelers were "making out" in a bathroom, a claim officials now deny. Cops were unable to flush out any terror plot on either plane. Nor was there any "romantic" activity, said officials.

Ohio housewife Shoshana Hebshi recounts in her blog how she was waiting innocently on the Frontier plane in Detroit waiting to disembark when cops carrying "the bigggest machine guns I have ever seen" slapped her in handcuffs, took her to a detention room, strip-searched her and questioned her for several hours. At least one passenger had reported concerns about bathroom trips by two Detroit men of Indian descent sitting on either side of her. None of the three knew each other. Hebshi never left her seat. She doesn't plan to fly again on September 11. "I believe in national security, but I also believe in peace and justice," she writes. "I believe in tolerance and trying—as hard as it sometimes may be—not to judge a person by the color of their skin or the way they dress." (More American Airlines stories.)

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