Bias Seen in Use of Passenger Profiles to Seek Air Terrorists

Using passenger profiles to seek out potential air terrorists unfairly targets Arabs and Americans of Arab and Muslim origin and subjects them to demeaning searches at airports, two advocacy groups charge.

The system, which was put in place after the crash of TWA Flight 800 a year ago, has turned the Arab community into scapegoats, said the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Council on American-Islamic Relations in separate news conferences Wednesday and Thursday.

They said an Arab American and his wife filed a lawsuit against US Airways last week for what the couple described as an extensive search of their luggage at Cleveland’s Hopkins International Airport in May. Hassan Abbass contended that he was singled out because he is Arab American.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the American-Islamic council, and the anti-discrimination committee’s president, Hala Maksoud, said that profiling does not prevent terrorism and that the real solution is electronic bomb detectors and bag matching: not allowing bags to be put on planes without their owners.

Federal Aviation Administration officials deny that profiling is based on race, religion, ethnicity or national origin and say there is confusion because the criteria are confidential.

FAA spokeswoman Rebecca Trexler said of the Abbass case: “If he wins the case, I’ll be very shocked because . . . the criteria aren’t based on that and that’s not why the person was selected.”

Houeida Saad of the anti-discrimination committee said her group has obtained the confidential security manuals of several airlines and they included these guidelines:

* Are there stamps from Arab countries in the passport?

* Does customer have a passport from Mideast or Arab country?

* Does your customer have an Arab sounding name and were they born in the Middle East or in an Arab country?