New York, January 22: An Orthodox Jew’s prayer rituals, including wearing a sacred box on his head, triggered a bomb scare Thursday aboard a US passenger plane, a security source said.
The Chautauqua Airlines jet bound from New York to Louisville, Kentucky, diverted to Philadelphia International Airport after what authorities described as a security incident caused by a “disruptive passenger.”
“It appears that it was a misunderstanding with a religious passenger wearing a religious item and praying loudly,” the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
“The flight crew deemed, I guess, his actions and his item he was using to be suspicious and diverted the airplane,” the security source said.
Greg Soule, spokesman for the TSA, said that the passenger in Thursday’s incident was questioned by law enforcement officers on the ground and that the plane was searched with “negative findings.”
“There’s an individual in custody,” an FBI spokesman in Philadelphia said. “There was a security concern but I can’t comment on that.”
Initial reports on CBS 3 television referred to a male passenger who’d strapped a wire from his fingers to his head.
The security source said that the passenger in question was in fact wearing a phylactery, the box containing Bible verses that Orthodox Jews strap around their head as part of their rituals.
He was “praying loudly and using this device,” the source said. “What we’re hearing is there was a language barrier.”
The misunderstanding echoed a string of embarrassing incidents involving Muslims or people of Middle Eastern appearance over recent years.
In 2006, an architect was prevented by security staff from boarding a JetBlue flight from New York to California while wearing a T-shirt with Arabic writing on the front.
Raed Jarrar, who is of Iraqi descent, said he was told by one official that “going to an airport with a T-shirt in Arabic script is like going to a bank and wearing a T-shirt that says ‘I’m a robber.'”
The T-shirt actually said in Arabic: “We will not be silent,” an anti-war slogan in the Middle East.
Newark International Airport was paralyzed earlier this month when a man made an unauthorized entry into a secure zone — just to give a departing passenger a last kiss, it turned out.
Another security scare occurred at a California airport when Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents found suspicious liquids on a passenger. The substance was later found to be honey.
—Agencies