United Arab Emirates businessman Ahmed Al Menhali was in the United States last week for treatment of several medical conditions in Cleveland.
Instead, he ended up collapsing outside an Avon, Ohio, hotel, after police officers charged at him with guns raised and handcuffed him.
They were responding to a false report that Al Menhali, dressed head-to-toe in traditional Arabian thobe, pledged allegiance to ISIS in a phone call from the Fairfield Inn and Suites lobby.
Video here.
The UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation called for an apology from Avon officials and warned citizens against wearing national dress when traveling to the United States.
Avon’s mayor and police chief apologized to Al Menhali on Saturday in a meeting in the Cleveland office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“You should not have been put in that situation,” Avon Police Chief Richard Bosley said.
Marriott Hotels, which owns Fairfield Inn and Suites, did not respond to requests for comment.
Al Menhali said he is grateful for the apology but it’s not enough. He wants those responsible for the 911 call to be held accountable. And, he hopes the police department will use it as a teachable moment in cross-cultural encounters.
“Ahmed greatly appreciates the overture by coming to meet him on a holiday weekend. He appreciates their sincere apology, this is a positive and very important first step,” a translator said on his behalf.
“However, he still has a lot of unanswered questions and concerns [as] to how this could have happened in the first place.”
The joys of tattle tale society.
Hi Brent,
I bet you remember when most people despised busybodies. I know I can.
Listening to a new station on Pandora a couple nights back and Merle Haggard came up. Merle sang some great songs but he sang a couple that get my BP up in the first two chords even before he starts singing. One of them is Fighting Side of Me.
I won’t repeat the lyrics since they evoke the fightin side of ME. Luckily, Pandora will chop a song toot sweet when you give a thumbs down. I hopefully won’t be accosted by it again.
I think Merle finally saw he error of his lyrics but in 1970 they were as likely to cause a fight in the living room as one at the honky tonk. The thinking man who saw through the statist shit was always highly outnumbered.
Hey Eric, first few lines of this post seem to have gotten flip-flopped. But good to know.
Kind of like the treatment anyone other than a muslim would get in a muslim country.
Hi to5,
Maybe so.
But that doesn’t make what happened to this guy right, does it?
The hardest thing is to come to the defense of people you may not like and even ideas you may revile in defense of a principle that’s critically important.
Like the presumption of innocence.
This guy was bum-rushed because of how he looked and because some “see something/say something” busybody sicced the Heroes on him.
If his right not to be bum-rushed on the basis of a busybody’s phone call isn’t respected then our right to not be bum-rushed on the basis of a busybody’s phone call is threatened.
eric, and then this article by Russ Baker would show another side. There are views of various groups that are extremist toward a group and could rightly point out extremist groups of all sorts right here in this country. Does this one radical group, of any sort, represent the great majority of people? The same can be done in any country.
http://whowhatwhy.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a9c27247b8a9046ea939df8ca&id=63642c11bc&e=b7f164fc35
See something Say something?!
Big Brother looking at you. Especially if you look different.
Wasn’t ‘See something, say something,’ or words to that effect, the motto of the Stasi?