Tag: amsterdam
Nigerian Christian Taken Off Flight After Being Mistaken For A Terrorist

Nigerian Christian Taken Off Flight After Being Mistaken For A Terrorist

In a case of mistaken identity, a Nigerian man was taken off a plane at a British airport after being misidentified as a Muslim terrorist, due to the name of a WhatsApp group he was texting. The man, it turns out, was a Christian, asking for prayers for safe passage to the Netherlands.

Laolu Opebiyi, a Nigerian-born Londoner, was taken off an Amsterdam-bound plane at Luton Airport after a passenger sitting next to him reported him to the flight staff. According to Opebiyi, the passenger was reading his texts over his shoulder and asked him what he meant by prayer. Opebiyi had been asking his friends for prayers for safe travel before the plane took off.

“That guy doesn’t know me and within two minutes he’s judging me,” Opebiyi told the Guardian. “Even if I was a Muslim, it was pretty unfair the way I was treated. I don’t think anyone, irrespective of their religion should be treated in such a way.”

The text messaging group he was part of was named “ISI Men,” a reference to a quote in the Bible, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” It is likely that the passenger misread the name of the group as ISIS Men, but it also seems unlikely that someone about to bomb a plane would readily give a stranger signs that he was about to do so.

Fifteen minutes later, the eavesdropping passenger said he was getting off the plane because he felt unwell. Shortly afterwards, two armed officers entered the plane and asked Opebiyi for his phone and that he take his belongings and follow them off the plane.

That he had a Bible in his bag was not enough to convince the officers he wasn’t a terrorist (read: Muslim). He was still asked if he ever considered converting (read: to Islam). Opebiyi took the next flight, four hours later, alongside passengers from the flight he was originally booked for, who assumed he was still a flight risk.

Upon arrival back in the UK, the e-gate didn’t let Opebiyi through, so he had to find an immigration officer and explain the situation surrounding his departure. “Someone felt I was a terrorist because they saw the word ‘prayer’ on my phone and now I stand in uncertainty about my freedom of movement in and out of the United Kingdom,” he said. He fears he may have been mistakenly added to a watchlist as a result of the incident.

Photo: The British Airways terminal at London Heathrow Airport (Tony Higsett/WIkimedia Commons)

Putting Names, Faces To Malaysian Airlines Victims

Putting Names, Faces To Malaysian Airlines Victims

By Michael Muskal and Christine Mai-Duc, Los Angeles Times

Around the world Friday, friends and loved ones gathered to mourn the passengers and crew who lost their lives on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, including a student from Indiana, a prominent AIDS researcher, teachers, tourists, and those just going home.

President Barack Obama on Friday identified the first, and so far only, known American citizen aboard as Quinn Lucas Schansman, who had Dutch and American citizenship.

A Facebook profile appearing to belong to Schansman indicates that he was living in Amsterdam as of April, and attending the International Business School at Hogeschool van Amsterdam. A photo posted by a woman who appears to be his girlfriend included numerous condolences from friends.

The Boeing 777 was carrying 298 people when it went down Thursday in eastern Ukraine, sending shock waves around the world from Malaysia to the Netherlands. The dead were from at least 10 countries with the majority, 189, Dutch.

Another passenger with American connections, Karlijn Keijzer, 25, of Amsterdam, was a doctoral student in chemistry at Indiana University and an avid rower who once competed on the women’s varsity rowing team, the school said. She had also earned her master’s degree at Indiana.

Keijzer was a member of Indiana’s varsity 8 crew during its 2011 season. “The Indiana rowing family is deeply saddened by the news of Karlijn’s sudden passing,” said rowing Coach Steve Peterson. “She came to us for one year as a graduate student and truly wanted to pursue rowing. That year was the first year we really started to make a mark … and she was a huge reason for it.”

At a televised news conference Friday, a Malaysia Airlines official gave the latest breakdown of those who died. In addition to the 189 Dutch, which includes Schansman, there were 29 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, nine from Britain, four each from Germany and Belgium, three from the Philippines, and one each from Canada and New Zealand. The nationalities of several passengers have yet to be verified and officials warned that other passengers may turn out to have dual citizenship.

The disaster over Ukraine was the second major tragedy this year involving a Malaysia Airlines flight. In March, Flight 370 went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and its 241 passengers and crew were all lost. No sign of the plane has been found.
For one Australian family, the disasters on opposite sides of the world will be forever linked.

Kaylene Mann’s brother Rod Burrows and sister-in-law Mary Burrows were on board MH370 when it vanished in March. On Friday, Mann told the Associated Press that the family had just found out that her stepdaughter, Maree Rizk, was killed on MH17.

“It’s just brought everyone, everything back,” said Greg Burrows, Mann’s brother. “It’s just … ripped our guts again.”

As many as 100 passengers on Flight 17 were traveling to Melbourne, Australia, for the 20th International AIDS conference starting this weekend. The mood among the AIDS research community was grim Friday. Among those lost was prominent researcher Joep Lange, a former president of the International AIDS Society, and his colleague, Jacqueline van Tongeren, according to the Academic Medical Center hospital in Amsterdam, where the pair worked.

“Joep was a man who knew no barriers,” the hospital said in a statement. “He was a great inspiration for everybody who wanted to do something about the AIDS tragedy in Africa and Asia.”

Organizers said the event, a leading forum for researchers to meet, form ties and discuss their work, would go on.

“In recognition of our colleagues’ dedication to the fight against HIV/AIDS, the conference will go ahead as planned and will include opportunities to reflect and remember those we have lost,” they said in a statement.

A World Health Organization spokesman traveling to the conference was also killed.

Television showed clips from the Amsterdam area of flowers being left outside a shop whose owner and boyfriend were among the missing. Mourners gathered outside the Malaysian embassy in Moscow to leave flowers and express their condolences.

Lousewies van der Laan, a Dutch politician and former member of the Dutch parliament, praised Dutch activist Pim de Kuijer, once her intern and believed to be among the dead. On Twitter, Van der Laan called de Kuijer “a brilliant, inspiring and caring activist fighting for equality and helping AIDS victims around the world.”

A Dutch senator, Willem Witteveen of the Labor Party, also died, the Dutch Senate announced.

Students at the Kincoppal-Rose Bay School of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic school in Sydney, Australia, gathered Friday for a special prayer meeting after it was confirmed that Sister Philomene Tiernan, a 77-year-old teacher, was killed.

“We’re absolutely devastated. For me, she’s been a great mentor and she’s also a personal friend,” school Principal Hilary Johnston-Croke told reporters, her voice breaking with emotion.

Another Australian school, Toorak College in Melbourne, was also bereaved, according to local media reports. Teacher Frankie Davison and her husband Liam were on the stricken flight, the school announced.

“Our hearts and sympathy goes out to their children Milly and Sam, and family,” the school said in a message online. “We are devastated by the news of this tragedy.”

Relatives were also mourning loved ones in Malaysia. Akmar Mohd Noor said her sister was flying home from Geneva to join her family for Hari Raya, the celebrations to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“She was coming back from Geneva to celebrate with us for the first time in 30 years,” Akmar told reporters.

AFP Photo/Dominique Faget

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Dutch Go Into Mourning For Victims Of Malaysia Jet Downing

Dutch Go Into Mourning For Victims Of Malaysia Jet Downing

By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times

LONDON — The Netherlands went into national mourning Friday over the scores of Dutch victims in the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, which took off from Amsterdam but never reached its destination.

More than half of the 298 people who died were Dutch. The tally reached 173 on Friday, up from the 154 identified earlier.

Flags throughout the Netherlands flew at half staff. Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who rushed home from vacation to deal with the crisis, called the crash a deep tragedy for his country and demanded a full investigation.

Other European leaders, including British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, also pressed for a complete investigation into how the jetliner was struck by a missile Thursday over eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border.

The plane was en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, where many anguished relatives of passengers gathered and received confirmation of the crash. The airport is one of Europe’s busiest.

“It is an absolutely appalling, shocking, horrific incident that has taken place, and we’ve got to get to the bottom of what happened and how this happened,” Cameron said. “If, as seems possible, this was brought down, then those responsible must be held to account, and we must lose no time in doing that.”

For the Netherlands, it’s the worst aviation disaster in years involving Dutch citizens. In 1992, an El Al cargo jet slammed into an apartment building near Schiphol, killing 43 people.

AFP Photo / Dominique Faget

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Obama Agents Sent Home From Europe For Boozing

Obama Agents Sent Home From Europe For Boozing

Washington (AFP) – In a new embarrassment for the U.S. Secret Service, three agents were sent home from Amsterdam for drunkeness, after one was found passed out in a hotel hallway.

The agents were in The Netherlands ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama’s trip there this week as part of the elite unit tasked with protecting the president in the event of an attack.

Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary confirmed to AFP Wednesday “three employees were sent home for disciplinary reasons,” without giving any further details.

The story was first reported in the Washington Post newspaper, which said the agents have been placed on administrative leave, citing three unnamed people familiar with the case.

The incident comes two years after a scandal involving Secret Service agents and prostitutes in the Colombian Caribbean resort of Cartagena.

That particular incident involved a dozen agents and officers who drank heavily and brought prostitutes to their hotel before the president’s arrival for an economic summit.

Their activities came to light when one of the call girls had an argument in a hotel hallway after an agent refused to pay her. Colombia then reported the incident to the U.S. embassy in Bogota.

In the new case, the alleged behavior would violate Secret Service rules adopted after the Cartagena scandal, the Post reported.

Barack Obama’s visit to the Netherlands started with a brief stop at the Rijksmuseum, a fine-arts museum in Amsterdam, before he attended a nuclear security summit in The Hague and met fellow G7 leaders for talks on the Ukraine crisis.

Obama flew to Brussels on Tuesday for his first ever visit to the European Union’s headquarters, and he is also due to visit Rome and The Vatican before heading to Saudi Arabia.

The Post said the three people sent home were members of the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team.

That unit goes into action if the president or his motorcade comes under attack — they aim to fight off any attackers and draw fire while the president’s protective detail removes him from the area.

The Post said hotel staff alerted the U.S. embassy in the Netherlands after finding the unconscious agent Sunday morning, the day before Obama arrived in the country.

The embassy then alerted Secret Service managers on the presidential trip, which included the agency’s director, Julia Pierson.

Under the new post-Colombia rules, staff on an official trip are banned from drinking alcohol in the 10 hours leading up to an assignment.

CAT members would have been called to duty sometime Sunday for a classified briefing ahead of the president’s arrival on Monday so drinking late into the night Saturday evening and Sunday morning would have violated that rule.

Two former agency employees with experience on foreign assignments described the counter-assault team as one of the most elite units in the agency, responsible for the president’s life.

CAT staff are required to be highly skilled shooters and extremely physically fit, with a demanding training regimen, the ex-employees told the Post.

Obama described the agents’ behavior in the Colombia scandal as unacceptable.

Ten agents were removed from their jobs. Several investigations were launched, and the new rules were designed to prevent a repeat of such activity.