Woman Thrown In Jail Over Suspicious Name

Security officers escorted 36 year old Shoshana Hebshi off the plane after it had landed at the Detroit airport because one Frontier Airlines’ employee felt her name ‘sounded’ suspicious.

US Military escort passengers from Frontier Airlines in Detroit. Photo Credit: Yahoo News

Hebshi was flying home from a visit to her sisters on September 11 2011 when she was taken from her seat and handcuffed in full view of all other passengers on board the Frontier Airlines flight.

“A few men dressed in complete military uniform carrying huge guns came running into the plane,” Hebshi recalls.

“The instructed everyone to bow their heads and place their hands on the headrest in front of them. I thought a fugitive was on board or maybe there had been a bomb threat. I certainly never expected they were coming for me,” says Hebshi.

Shoshana Hebshi was held in an isolated cell for four hours and was subjected to a nude body search. When Hebshi asked why this was happening she allegedly was told because an employee from Frontier felt her name sounded suspicious.

Two Asian men on board the plane were also arrested after passengers stated the men worried them because they went to the bathroom a lot during the flight.

Hebshi, the daughter of an Arabian dad and a Jewish mother, a freelance journalist, talks in great detail about her ordeal on her blog.

Hebshi is now suing both the Federal Aviation Agency as well as the Frontier Airlines because her lawyer is convinced the ‘assault’ on his client wasn’t based on a simple mistake but on the institutionalizing of racial stereotypes and massive distrust as legal tactics.

CBS states that Frontier Airlines maintains their employee didn’t do anything wrong and no form of ‘profiling’ was applied but that the decision was made because the individual ‘behaved’ suspicious.