Aviation Security

6 imams, Aviation Security, CAIR, Political wind

Libs: Lawsuits 1st, Safety 2nd

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This past week, a majority of House Democrats and nearly every New York City metropolitan area Democrat voted to allow CAIR and the ‘6 flying imams’ to sue the passengers who reported the latter’s suspicious behavior. I explain what happened on the House floor in my commentary this morning in the New York Post:

Why must Democrats constantly defend against charges that they can’t be trusted on issues of national security? Well, consider what went on in the House of Representatives last Wednesday night.

Various members of the House majority had just spent 30 minutes in self-praise over the $7.3 billion transportation-security bill, calling it long-overdue relief for millions of Americans. Then Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.) rose to propose an amendment directed at a dangerous new threat to national security.

His motion was a response to the “John Doe” lawsuit filed by six “Flying Imams.” Last November, the six were ejected from a US Airways flight after their fellow passengers reported what they saw as strange and disturbing behavior. The imams claim that they were victims of “intentional” and “malicious” discrimination and are seeking compensation, including punitive damages — from the airlines, and also from the passengers and crew, who are identified in the suit as “John Does” to be served with legal papers once a court order reveals their actual identities.

That lawsuit is a dangerous threat to a vital component of public-transit security — the public itself.

King explained as much, speaking on behalf of his amendment, which would protect anyone who makes a reasonable, good-faith report of suspicious activity from being the target of a lawsuit. “We have an enemy which is constantly adapting,” King said Wednesday. “We have to think outside the box.”

That enemy, of course is al Qaeda — which is obsessed with slaughtering innocents using public transportation. There was Madrid’s “3/11” — 10 bombs detonated on four trains at the height of the morning rush hour, killing 191 and injuring 2,050. And London’s “7/7”— four suicide bombers in the Underground and on a double-decker bus, resulting in 52 dead and 700 injured.

In New York City alone, 7 million people use mass transit every day. With 400 subway stations with 1,500 entrances, the trains are a “soft” target — one the NYPD can’t adequately protect without help from the public.

Every New York City rail and transit rider has seen the signs: “If you see something, say something.” The principle is obvious — in an age of terror, we should all have our eyes open. If the imams’ lawsuit prospers, how many people won’t say something — for fear of being sued?

Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), who’d offered an earlier bill to protect good Samaritans who alert officials, rose to speak after King. “If we allow these suits to go forward,” he warned the House, “it will have a chilling effect on the future of American security … If we are serious about fighting terrorism, if we are serious about protecting Americans and asking them to help protect each other, then we must pass this motion.”

This is the kind of no-brainer legislation that every member of Congress should vigorously support. Yet House Democrats reacted to King’s proposal as if he’d thrown a bomb into the House chamber itself.

According to witnesses in the gallery and on the floor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi displayed a classic deer-in-the headlights look as the Democratic leadership went into a huddle — plainly eager, not to embrace this common-sense measure, but to sidetrack it.

Meanwhile, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, took the floor to oppose King’s motion —- and to defend the lawsuit against John Does. “We should be tolerant,” he argued; people shouldn’t be singled out because they “look different.”

In fact, the flying imams triggered concerns by a variety of unusual actions, as well as words that roused the concern of another Arabic-speaking passenger. Witnesses say that House members started booing Thompson.

Finally, a member of the leadership realized how this would look to Americans watching on C-SPAN: Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) was seen staring at Thompson and repeatedly drawing his hand across his throat — an urgent signal to get off the floor.

With Democrats realizing they couldn’t argue against King’s measure, it went to a vote, and passed, 304 to 121.

CLICK ON IMAGE to see what else Congressman Pascrell recently did for CAIR

The story isn’t over yet. To become law, this measure must also pass the Senate — and survive House-Senate conference, where the leadership might try to quietly excise King’s reform.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will certainly push for that. After all, the radical “civil rights” group — which supports the terrorists of Hamas and has received millions in funding from Saudi Arabia — is paying the lawyers in the “Flying Imams” lawsuit.

Nihad Awad, CAIR’s executive director, defends the suit’s targeting of ordinary citizens. The clerics, he explains, will only sue passengers who made false reports or acted in bad faith. But the suit cites an “elderly couple” who watched the imams in the gate area and then made a cellphone call. How will CAIR determine who the couple called and whether anything they did was intended to discriminate against the imams, without first finding out their names and forcing them to defend against the charge? What about their civil rights?

In the future, who will be willing to risk their savings in the face a potential lawsuit underwritten by wealthy Middle Eastern donors?

If King’s measure becomes law, that worry will vanish. But the bill will have to survive the instinct of Congress’ Democratic leadership to pander to political correctness and CAIR’s special-interest pressure.

Democrats who don’t want to be branded as soft on national security should remember the image of Rahm Emanuel on the House floor, drawing his hand across his neck.

Editor’s (this site’s) notes:

(1) On the same day, March 13, 2007, CAIR met in the US Capitol meeting room Congressman Bill Pacrell had arranged for them, the 6 imams announced (at a nearby CAIR press conference) their lawsuit against US Airways and the “John Doe” passengers aboard Flight 300.

(2) Debra Burlingame is the sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame, pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was hijacked and crashed at the Pentagon on 9/11. She is also a former flight attendant and lawyer, currently a Director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, and a co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America.

6 imams, Aviation Security, CAIR

CAIR and 6 imams need mirror to find bigots

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The change proves their lawsuit was always about 6 imams and their Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) lawyers intimidating passengers into silence by accusing them of discrimination and suing them into poverty. The Washington Times reports this morning that:

A group of imams suing US Airways for discrimination amended their lawsuit this week to target only the “John Doe” passengers who they say are racist and falsely accused them of behaving suspiciously.

The six imams were removed from a flight in Minneapolis in November for disruptive behavior reported by passengers and members of the flight crew.

The lawsuit filed earlier this month targeted “passengers who contacted US Airways to report the alleged ‘suspicious’ behavior of plaintiffs performing their prayer at the airport terminal.”

The Becket Fund received an “extended response” to their original letter to CAIR, as the Washington Times report states. Becket Fund President Kevin Hasson answered the “narrowed” focus of the suit:

We are not taking sides in the lawsuit itself, nor do we think it is improper to have filed it. In fact I believe I noted in my initial letter that the airlines were “fair game” to such a suit. So, of course, is the government. I have no idea whose version of the facts is correct, or who will therefore prevail, but the idea of such a lawsuit is not outside the civil rights tradition.
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The is no way Mr. Mohammedi [Omar Mohammedi is the 6 imams’ CAIR supplied lawyer] can possibly determine whether the John Does “knowing made false reports” against his clients “with the intent to discriminate against them” without taking their testimony under oath, at least during pretrial discovery. That prospect alone, of being dragged into costly court proceedings, will certainly provide a great disincentive for other citizens to come forward with their own suspicions.

This is all the more true when the only example the complaint continues to give of a John Doe “who may have knowingly made false reports against the imams with the intent to discriminate against them” is of the elderly gentleman who observed them praying while talking on his cell phone. There are no indications whatsoever that anyone falsely accused them of say, carrying weapons, wearing shoebombs or the like. And in any event, any such extreme, false claims would surely be investigated and prosecuted by a government that takes even jokes about such things very seriously. No, the behavior Mr. Mohammedi seems bent on at least investigating under oath is simply that of ordinary people voicing their suspicions, as both the government and the airlines are repeatedly exhorting everyone to do.

Let’s take a look at what the imams’ lawsuit says (still), specifically:

On or about 4:20 p.m. in time for the Maghreb (early evening / dusk Muslim prayer), Plaintiffs decided to pray togeher. Plaintiffs Faja, Sadeddin and Shqeirut decided not to pray and instead watched over everyone’s belongings. As they were seated, Plaintiffs Faja, Sadeddin and Shqeirat noticed an older couple who were sitting behind them and purposely turning around to watch the other Plaintiffs as they prayed together the gentleman (“John Doe”) in the couple facing Plaintiffs at gate C9 picked up his cellular phone and made a phone call while watching the Plaintiffs pray… Defendant John Doe moved to a corner near gate C9. While observing the Plaintiffs discreetly, he kept talking into the cellular phone.

Think of their description of the waiting area. In order for them to have noticed “an older couple… sitting behind them… purposely turning around to watch the other Plaintiffs as they prayed together” Faja, Sadeddin and Shqeirat would have had to purposely turn around and look at the older couple themselves. While they had no way of knowing what that call was about, the 3 over-watching imams kept their eyes on “John Doe” as he moved about the gate area. Why? Obviously they had their mark. The 6 imams’ hunt began on November 20, 2006, in the gate area in Minneapolis-St. Paul’s US Airway terminal.

But one “bigot” does not add weight to a lawsuit; the 6 imams had to do more. After they boarded the plane, passengers had to see some of them in seats they were not assigned, moving about the cabin, and seated in a manner reminding the wary of reports of the seating taken up by the 9/11 hijackers. They had to be overhead disparaging American foreign policy and the treatment of Saddam Hussein. One imam, reportedly weighing about 175 pounds, had to be overheard asking for a seatbelt extender “since the seatbelts did not fit” [Ed.–Two more asked for seatbelt extenders. The largest of the 3 is 235 pounds. And the seatbelt extenders were never used as all were found rolled up on the floor under the 3 imams’ seats].

3 of the 6 flying imams asked for and received seatbelt extenders

Prejudging passengers as bigots, arousing their suspicions, and provoking them to report their concerns to a commercial airliner’s crew sounds like the intentional creation of a hostile environment. In the workplace, the creation of a hostile environment based upon race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, religion, or disability would invite both a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and a discrimination lawsuit. Yet in public and in this age of litigation, it is the victims that must match CAIR’s lawyers, dollar for dollar, and see their reputations put on public trial.

The police cannot read minds. They could only examine the passengers statements, look at the physical evidence available to them, and interview the suspects. In the end, the authorities decided a false report had not been made and no threat existed. No one was charged and no further investigation was planned.

If a federal law protecting passengers (who act in good faith and report suspicious behavior) from civil liability shuts down their lawsuit, the 6 imams and CAIR will be left looking at the real bigots in this incident, the ones in the mirror.