Turban, camera,detention!!!!

www.boston.com...

Here a student, who accroding to his religion dresses in specific clothing that was enough to have Secret Service agetns question him for taking pictures.

Sahni, 21, said he believes he was singled out because of his appearance. At one point during the searches, he said, an agent told him: "I don't want you pulling an Uzi from your turban."

This kid HAD to have done something like mouth off when approached.

College officials, however, did confirm the agents' presence on the campus and said that they questioned Sahni and his friends out of concern that photographs were being taken of the buildings where the agents were housed.

hmmm...so maybe he was bieng a bit of a wise ass taking the pics, or are we just very cautious as a country, as we should be. I would rather be overcautious then deal with another terror attack.

Sahni, meanwhile, said that he would resist his impulse to leave school and return to Kuwait, because he owes it to other Sikhs to stay and push for at least an apology.

finish your schooling or go back home...hmmm, I think MA is alot nicer than being Iraqs neighbor...

OK, fire away at how 'we' as Americans are losing our civil liberites...

College officials, however, did confirm the agents' presence on the campus and said that they questioned Sahni and his friends out of concern that photographs were being taken of the buildings where the agents were housed.

This kid got what he deserved. Anyone with half a brain knows that you DONT go around taking pictures of a building that houses the Secret Service. Sheesh!

And, if he was doing it just to be a smart a**, he still got what he deserved. Hopefully, he will think twice from now on.

For those who are gonna say something about how we are losing civil liberties... If that were true, this kid would have been hauled away and locked up for a long time, not simply detained for a bit and questioned.

hey, if i wrote this quick enough then i'm with the 2 people above me. i hope the kid wasn't harrassed or anything, but he definitly should of been smarter then that. some people will call it racial profiling, i just say it's being realistic.

I don't think an apology should be given. They were just doing their jobs, and I suppose there was reason to question him in suspicion, and it is being realistic.

"BC teaches people how to be leaders, and I have told people in the past that they should stand up for their rights," he said. "It's my turn to try to make sure this is never going to happen again."

This is from another article in the Portsmouth Herald.

and check this out....
this is his resume, gotta love goolge, some interesting stuff he has done....

www.bciba.org...


Researched an efficient and cheap way to transport commercial containers between Venice, Milan and Munich
Developed the first software to locate exact container position in storage



He is aprt of the Student UN, knows 5 languages and he also worked for a Port Authority company in Italy last summer to work on containers in ships.. This guy is a read flag, sorry for his luck.

[edit on 30-7-2004 by esdad71]

I noticed this in the article:

At one point, Shawaf said, an agent asked him whether he knew that his friend Sahni had an "obsession" with Social Security numbers and that he had a criminal record. Sahni, however, said that he has never been arrested and that the agent might have been referring to a time recently when he left his Social Security card on a university-owned scanner, after scanning it into his computer as a backup in case it was lost.

Boston College officials said they are giving Sahni their full support and are attempting to arrange a meeting between the student and the Secret Service. "We want to arrange a conversation, which we hope will result in an apology," said Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn.

Now it seems fairly obvious that the University kept some sort of record that this guy scanned his SSA card and then reported that fact to the Secret Service. Why is the University now crying foul? Is it okay for them to play "big brother" to students all of the while telling the press that the Secret Service owes this guy an apology?

If this guy has a reason to be ticked off, it seems that anger should be directed at his school administration.

Sikhs are NOT Muslims and although there are extremist elements, the ire is directed towards India by separatists hoping to establish an independent state in the north. The guy got what he deserved but Americans are too accustomed to lumping all brown skinned foreigners with "funny" headgear into the Mooslim category.

For one thing, they said, only Sahni, whose family is originally from India, was searched and questioned while Shawaf, a Muslim from Saudi Arabia who dresses and wears his hair in Western style, was not. And if the pictures were the issue, they said, why would the agents focus on Sahni when the camera belonged to his friend Khotkar, an Australian of Indian Hindu descent?

"Someone had reported them as suspicious"? That sounds suspicious. Brown people taking pictures! I don't know the whole story, neither does anyone else. But why does ebveryone want to jump on the side of the Secret Service, and not on some poor kid taking pictures of his college campus? It's apparent that he was only searched because of his turban. If you still want to support our government, right or wrong, at least be angry he didn't search his 'normal' looking muslim friend!

Errr goverment buildings and cameras dont mix.

That kid was lucky to get away with what he did.

Sikhs are usually pretty easy to tell apart from muslims, they wear their turbines differently which are usually colorful. There are alot of them here in Phx AZ, where that poor guy (balbir singh sodi) got shot after 9/11 cuz the idiot that shot him didnt know the difference. Poor sikhs. I feel sorry for them because they are very peaceful.

Im sorry but I sympathise more with the kid then the Secret Service. According to the article its not like the kid was taking pictures of the building because the secret service was stationed there or even knew they were there to begin with. He was just wandering around campus taking pictures. Its not even like were talking about a federal building or a sensitive military installation with signs saying no pictures its just a college campus. What gets me though is the fact that you can be harrased for taking pictures. I mean hearing this just makes me think of the Soviet Union. You know like when the KGB would confiscate film and cameras because they contained images of "sensitive" areas.