CAIR for avoiding ethnic profiling of airline passengers

WASHINGTON The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a prominent Muslim civil rights group, Tuesday called on airline passengers, crews and security personnel to avoid ethnic and religious profiling in the wake of the attempted bombing of a flight arriving in Detroit on Christmas Day.
CAIR made that call following two incidents in the United States in which innocent passengers were targeted based either on their national origin or on otherwise ordinary behaviour.
In Arizona, two Middle Eastern men were removed from a US Airways flight in Phoenix and questioned by the FBI after another passenger overheard the men speaking in a foreign language. The men were questioned and released, according to press reports.
In Michigan, police removed a Nigerian passenger from a flight after he became ill and spent what others considered too much time in the aircrafts bathroom.
While everyone supports robust airline security measures, racial and religious profiling are in fact counterproductive and can lead to a climate of insecurity and fear, CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper said in a statement.
Reuters adds: Amsterdams Schiphol Airport will begin using full-body scanners within three weeks to scan people travelling to the United States after consultations with US authorities, the Dutch interior minister said on Wednesday.
The minister said ordinary procedures were followed properly in the Christmas Day handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
We will make these machines, about 15 in total, available for flights to the United States within three weeks time, Guusje ter Horst told a news conference in The Hague.
Ter Horst said normal metal detectors could not detect explosives, and the use of the full-body scanners would have helped prevent Abdulmuttalab from taking explosives onto the aircraft.
She also warned there was no 100 percent guarantee that the new detectors would have enabled airport security to catch him.
Full-body scanners, unlike the standard archway metal detectors currently used in airports around the world, use radio waves to generate a picture of the body that can see anomalies through clothing.
The investigation is continuing into whether Abdulmutallab had help in Amsterdam, the interior ministry said in a report on the investigation it released on Wednesday.
It found no evidence he had been to Amsterdam before the flight to Detroit, as some had speculated.