Citizen’s ‘humiliating’ post-9/11 arrest

HANDCUFFED and marched through Washington’s Dulles International Airport in his Muslim clothing, the man with the long, dark beard could only imagine what people were thinking.

That scene unfolded in March 2003, a year and a half after the September 11 terrorist attacks. One of the four planes hijacked in 2001 took off from Dulles. “I could only assume that they thought I was a terrorist,” Abdullah al-Kidd recalled.

Al-Kidd called his airport arrest “one of the most, if not the most, humiliating experiences of my life.” The humiliation had only just begun.