News Agencies – February 25, 2012
It was supposed to be a cross-border shopping trip to New York State to break the monotony of a Quebec winter – a Montreal soccer dad, his wife, their adult son and their two youngest children packed in a car, headed toward Plattsburgh. But when the Benaouda family got to the U.S. border, their outing turned into a scene from a bad movie – complete with shouting FBI agents, handcuffs, interrogation and six hours of unexplained detention.
More than a decade after 9/11, Muslim Canadian travellers with no proven links to terrorism continue to be targeted when they fly or try to cross into the U.S. Mohamed Benaouda, a Canadian citizen with Algerian roots who says he has never had any run-ins with the law, was handcuffed, photographed, fingerprinted, held in a cell and interrogated.
