29 Mar 2024
Wednesday 12 March 2014 - 10:01
Story Code : 88755

Iran woman fingerprinted, ‘aggressively’ frisked in US

Iran woman fingerprinted, ‘aggressively’ frisked in US

Iranian national Shahrzad Mir-Qolikhan, who spent five years in US detention from 2007 to 2012, says she was treated “disrespectfully” when she arrived at Miami International Airport.
In a Press TV documentary entitled “Memories of a Witness: Inside US Federal Prisons,” in which she recounts her ordeal, Mir-Qolikhan, now 36, said she had a feeling that her mistreatment could have been due to her nationality.
“I thought because I’m Iranian, they had this attitude,” she noted.

A mother of twins, Mir-Qolikhan said she told airport officials that, “I’m officially invited by your government, and you have no right to talk like that.”

Nevertheless, she was told to “remain silent.”

Citing the “humiliating attitude” of the officers toward her, Mir-Qolikhan said she was fingerprinted and then told to wait out of the room.

A little while later, Mir-Qolikhan said, she was told by an official in charge that “I have to inform you officially that you are under arrest.”

She was then “aggressively” body-searched by a lady officer.


“She pushed me on the wall and she started searching me,” Mir-Qolikhan recollected, visibly distressed.
The Iranian national says she was “handcuffed” and taken to the Federal Detention Center of Miami where she didn’t see the sun for the following 18 months.

In an earlier episode of the program, Mir-Qolikhan explained that she had been arrested in the Austrian capital of Vienna in 2007 based on a request from the US government.

She said she was charged with attempting to illegally import US-made night-vision goggles into Iran.

She was held in a dreaded detention center in the Austrian capital for 28 days before she was released when the US government failed to provide any evidence of wrongdoing against her, Mir-Qolikhan added.

By Press TV

 

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