Post by Logan on Apr 18, 2016 4:23:09 GMT -6
Berkeley student says airline removed him for speaking Arabic
LOS ANGELES – A UC Berkeley student who came to the U.S. as an Iraqi refugee says he was unfairly removed from a flight at Los Angeles International Airport earlier this month because a fellow passenger was alarmed by an innocent conversation he was having in Arabic.
Southwest Airlines said in a statement Sunday that the passenger, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, was taken off the April 9 flight from Los Angeles to Oakland, California, for questioning and the plane took off while that was happening. But the airline said it has not received a direct complaint from Makhzoomi, and he has not responded to several attempts to reach him.
Makhzoomi, a 26-year-old senior at UC Berkeley, said that he was calling his uncle before the flight to tell him about a speech he had attended by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
“I was very excited about the event, so I called my uncle to tell him about it,” Makhzoomi told the New York Times.
Read more: www.ocregister.com/articles/makhzoomi-712521-told-angeles.html
LOS ANGELES – A UC Berkeley student who came to the U.S. as an Iraqi refugee says he was unfairly removed from a flight at Los Angeles International Airport earlier this month because a fellow passenger was alarmed by an innocent conversation he was having in Arabic.
Southwest Airlines said in a statement Sunday that the passenger, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, was taken off the April 9 flight from Los Angeles to Oakland, California, for questioning and the plane took off while that was happening. But the airline said it has not received a direct complaint from Makhzoomi, and he has not responded to several attempts to reach him.
Makhzoomi, a 26-year-old senior at UC Berkeley, said that he was calling his uncle before the flight to tell him about a speech he had attended by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
“I was very excited about the event, so I called my uncle to tell him about it,” Makhzoomi told the New York Times.
Read more: www.ocregister.com/articles/makhzoomi-712521-told-angeles.html