Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Man's vacation takes a detour

A Palestinian raises suspicion on an arriving plane. Police are called. He is jailed on a separate warrant.

By ABBIE VANSICKLE
Published March 2, 2007

TAMPA - Maybe it was his desire to stand and stretch in the airplane.

Maybe it was the gruesome images of torture he watched on his laptop that caught attention.

Something about Iyad Abuhajjaj's behavior on a Southwest Airlines flight from Phoenix to Tampa on Wednesday afternoon concerned airline officials enough to call police.

Police have not accused Abuhajjaj, 36, of any wrongdoing on the plane, but a search of his name revealed an Okaloosa County warrant for his arrest.

On Thursday, the Palestinian health care worker and actor who lives in California was held without bail in the Hillsborough County jail. Deputies say Abuhajjaj met a Florida woman online in 2002, threatened her and used her AOL account without permission.

In a jail interview, he told a reporter he suspected he was singled out on the plane because of his thick accent, dark hair and olive skin.

"I felt like it was because of my ethnic background," he said. "The accent, that's probably it. It could be my look, my accent, I can't say for sure."

A Southwest Airlines spokeswoman said a report on the incident was not finished. She said the airline does not discriminate or single anyone out for their race or ethnic background.

Abuhajjaj flew from his home in San Jose, Calif., to Phoenix, then to Tampa on Wednesday for a vacation.

He said he needed a break from his job with a mental health organization.

In the plane, he flipped open his laptop to watch scenes from a movie he's filming with Stanford University students.

Called The Strange Case of Salman abd al Haqq, the film deals with the arrest and interrogation of terrorism suspects. Abuhajjaj plays an Egyptian secret service officer, said Jeff Orolowski, the film's co-director and a Stanford senior.

Some scenes show violent and bloody torture of prisoners, Orolowski said. Characters speak in English and Arabic.

Abuhajjaj wondered if passengers or crew members saw the footage.

"Maybe somebody saw the scenes and thought it was real," he said.

Then, he got up to use the restroom and started to stretch. A flight attendant asked him to sit down, while another passenger continued to stand up, he said. Frustrated, Abuhajjaj asked the flight attendants for names of their supervisors.

When he got off the plane, he was detained by airport police, who questioned him. A police report says only that he was "a suspicious person," and that "Southwest personnel advised that the passenger's behavior changed during the flight."

When a computer search showed the warrant, Abuhajjaj was taken to jail on charges stemming from accusations made against him in 2002 by a woman in Fort Walton Beach.

Kimberly M. Mathis, a 29-year-old teacher at Rocky Bayou Christian School, accused him of threatening to kill her and misusing her family's Internet account.

Mathis could not be reached for comment, but her father, Ron Mathis, said he distrusted Abuhajjaj because he is a Palestinian.

"I won't go into the arena of judging anybody, but he himself I took as a threat to my daughter, my family and any American, living, breathing person," Mathis said.

News researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Abbie VanSickle can be reached at 813 226-3373 or vansickle@sptimes.com.

[Last modified March 2, 2007, 00:11:58]