As the United States of America celebrated Independence Day over the three-day weekend, the United Arab Emirates issued a warning to its citizens Sunday to avoid wearing traditional clothing when traveling abroad!
The warning came after police confronted a businessman from Abu Dhabi at a hotel in Avon, near Cleveland, Ohio, last week, when the clerk thought he might be a terrorist.
#CAIR: Ohio police arrest innocent Emiriates citizen following tip-off he was Isis terrorist
Julia Shearson,… https://t.co/nd5mJMuulf
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) July 3, 2016
The female clerk’s sister made an emergency call to Avon Police Department to report a a man in Middle Eastern headgear who spoke Arabic on a mobile phone in the hotel’s lobby.
The businessman was later identified as Ahmad al-Menhali, 41, who was in the country for medical reasons after having suffered a stroke.
Al-Menhali had just been informed there were no rooms available because the Republican National Convention was in town. He was still talking on his phone when police showed up with firearms.
Footage has since been released of the incident, from the 911 phone call, to al-Menhali standing outside the hotel, talking on his phone, when police officers armed with rifles shows up and wrestles him to the ground. He collapsed after a search.
Al-Menhali had to be taken to the hospital, where he explained, through a friend, the hotel clerk’s reaction,
“She went off and texted her sister and said I pledged my allegiance to Isis.”
After officers interviewed the hotel clerk, they concluded there had been a “clear miscommunication” with her sister according to the New York Times. Al-Menhali had not made any statements related to ISIS, and the incident is being investigated so the findings can be forwarded to the prosecutor’s office for review.
Julia Shearson, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), said of the incident,
“The fact that the police referred to his clothing in their report as a criminal indicator is very concerning. […] Police need more diversity training. This is shocking to have happened in Avon, one of the most affluent and suburban neighborhoods outside of Cleveland.”
But the warning from the United Arab Emirates has also coincided with heightened security alerts in cities around the world since the horrific terrorist attacks in Iraq, Bangladesh and Turkey. While our fears of terrorism are valid, we must be very careful not to turn them into witch hunts.
Al-Menhali did receive an apology. Will he follow the United Arab Emirates’s warning to avoid wearing traditional clothing on his next trip to the United States? Watch the arrest followed by the apology here:
Featured image picture from Twitter.
