The Manhattan Project
Morning Roundup: Second Helpings Edition
Fire at 17th and L NW Forces Evacuations
Compromise Uncertain on Same-Sex Marriage Law
Sculpture Garden Ice-Skating Rink Remains Closed
Here's a story we missed from earlier this week: Via the Boston Globe, D.C. taxicab driver Ermiyas A. Asfaw was arraigned on Monday in Boston on charges of joking that he was a member of Al Qaeda and that he planned to "blow things up" at Logan International Airport.
Asfaw was checking in for a flight on AirTran on Saturday night when an agent asked him why he had stickers on his luggage from Dubai. He told the agent he had been there, and when they asked him whether he was there on business or pleasure, Asfaw responded: "No. I'm Al Qaeda. I'm with them, and I'm here to blow things up."
It's pretty clearly a joke, but it wasn't funny to airport authorities, who quickly called State Police and had Asfaw arrested. Asfaw pleaded not guilty to making a bomb threat and was held on $1500 bail.
Asfaw is a UDC graduate with no criminal record. He was in Boston visiting his girlfriend.
Image from the Globe
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Terrorism!! Ha ha ha, funny stuff. Oh Ermiyas, you merry prankster.
Wow. He should be arrested for criminal stupidity.
A DC hack is a moron? What a surprise...
"I'm with them" doesn't sound like a joke. Stupid, but not funny and for all we know true. Doesn't matter if he was a graduate of Harvard and studying to be a Priest, it was an inappropriate comment to make.
Idiot.
That was clearly a joke? Sommer, I have to disagree with you on this one.
Ok, so what legitimate member of Al Qaeda would announce that "I'm with them" and get himself arrested before he accomplishes his mission? This guy should have known better, but did they seriously think a terrorist would say something like that??
Ok, so what legitimate member of Al Qaeda would announce that "I'm with them" and get himself arrested before he accomplishes his mission? This guy should have known better, but did they seriously think a terrorist would say something like that??
I flew across country recently, and there was a sign posted by the security checkpoint: "No joking about bombs or terrorism. The security people will take it literally, because we only pay enough to hire morons."
Funny thing is, he probably won't lose his DC Cab License and will be free to go on ripping off tourists and not knowing where Catholic University is in his 1989 piece of junk cab with bad breaks.
Funny thing is, he probably won't lose his DC Cab License and will be free to go on ripping off tourists and not knowing where Catholic University is in his 1989 piece of junk cab with bad brakes.
Never use sarcasm when you speak to low-wage workers who stand on their feet all day and have 30-seconds-worth of authority.
The thing is, yeah it'd be great to be able to joke about this and not get arrested, but I personally do not want these workers put in the position of having to calibrate their sarcasm detectors.
I'd much rather just arrest everyone who says something stupid like this and let someone else besides a TSA front-line employee sort things out.
To those who think the agent was over-reacting......try to imagine the public reaction to any TSA worker who laughed at this "joke" and let an actual bomber on a plane.
And, the fact that this guy is a DC cabbie is only icing on the cake for his stupid behavior. Like Guest9 said, the sad thing is he won't lose his license.
It was common knowledge that you can't make jokes like this loooong before 9/11 -- when Al Qaeda members were still pooping their pampers and blowing up their barbies' dream houses.
At least not in Boston- I mean have we forgotten the aqua-team-bomb freak out.
Guest 12 and Reid:
I agree 100% with you guys. The underlining issue is way too serious to try to make snap judgments about whether or not someone is joking.
The main point should be don't joke about that crap in an airport or Amtrek station. Its just socially/morally wrong and stupid.
Sounds like he didn't come as close to being shot as the student with the blinking name tag (which got described all over the media as a "fake bomb").
Sure, it was a joke, but a bad joke. I agree w/ Reid %100-
I don't understand the need to arrest him. If someone says something (anything) suspicious, here's a novel idea: search his bags! Search him! If he doesn't have a bomb, I think it's pretty safe to say that he's not going to blow anything up. On the other hand, if he has a bomb, arrest him.
If the only thing the TSA is using to stop terrorists is a verbal interrogation, well, we're in trouble, aren't we?
Also, (this is Guest #18 again), are we beginning to see a pattern here with HUGE overreactions in Boston airports? First the Mooninite thing, then the MIT student with the flashing nametag, and now this. Get a grip, Boston, yes, everyone in America hates you, but al Qaeda couldn't care less…
I have no sympathy for him. What an idiot.
Guest 19, New Haven has some problems too. Charging people with a crime because of police overreactions is insane (so is seeking reimbursement from the victims). The cab driver is a different case, since his joking was intentional and is prohibited. Still, I wouldn't want his punishment to be that severe, just enough to discourage the joking.
Guest 18/19 -- I'll give you the MIT thing, but since when is it an overreaction to respond to someone saying "I'm here to blow things up?" Making such a threat is illegal. And people have been arrested for such "jokes" for years. It's not just a post-9/11 phenomena. And as we've seen with 9/11, you don't actually need explosives on you to blow up a plane or a building.
That said, I do hate it when airline/airport/TSA employees think a sticker from Dubai is suspicious. One of my brother's co-workers, a short red-haired Scottish woman, was detained for about 30 minutes of extra questioning a couple of years back simply because her passport said she had been to Dubai or Qatar.
You see? I can't stress this enough, people. Not even in jest should you say something like, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if I killed the president?"
[shuffle][shouts][sounds of dragging away]
...
Certain people on a certain day happened to get on a plane in Boston for those who don't remember. Of all the airports to make jokes in, Boston is a bad choice.
Agreed w/ Reid et. al.
And I even think it's funny. I can totally imagine a scenario in which a guy of middle eastern descent is traveling back to the US from the middle east, goes through an inordinate amount of scrutiny on top of the usual stress of travel and gets fed up and mouths off. I can appreciate that, but it's still bad judgment, and front-line TSA workers don't really get to decide whether someone is joking or not. Hopefully Sommer and everyone else gets that.
TSA recognizes that it has humorless workers. That is why there are big signs at each airport that say "All Jokes Will Be Taken Seriously."
All jokes except the unintentional joke of TSA itself.
Flying would be a lot easier if congressmen took the bus twice a week. Then you would have to take your shoes off and empty your pockets down at the Greyhound station.
This guy is a cabbie in DC? Stupid motherfucker. And this is an industry that unfortunately seems to attract enough stupid motherfuckers like this piece of shit to spoil the whole bunch.
Wow #27!
an industry that unfortunately seems to attract enough stupid motherfuckers like this piece of shit to spoil the whole bunch.
You realize you contradict yourself, right? How could one "piece of shit" "spoil the whole bunch" if said bunch are workers in "an industry that attracts...stupid motherfuckers?"
One piece of shit spoiled the bunch of motherfuckers?
When I flew on my first airplane in the 1980s, easily 20 years ago, one of the first things the security guard said to us was "Ok guys, no joking about anything, do you understand? You joke about something dangerous and you get arrested." And we were straight about it. I heard stories in high school about people getting arrested for joking about "hijacking the plane and flying it to cuba." This is not something that only happened post-9/11, this was something people were not supposed to joke about since the DB Cooper era. That was 30 years ago, find something funny to joke about, ok?
Could you make such a statement? Yes. Could you make such a statement and not expected to be in custody? No.
Land of the free, home of the, well, the not really all that free.
Yet we collectively continue to subscribe to the myth.
May God have mercy on all our souls.
Joking about blowing things up = stupid. He deserves whatever he's got coming to him, because as numerous others have pointed out, it's been illegal since the dawn of time to joke about carrying a bomb or being a terrorist at an airport. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
THAT SAID, I'm equally disturbed by the fact that the guy was being given the runaround simply because he'd been to Dubai. What did that have to do with him boarding a plane in Boston? My wide went to Egypt once--is she going to be subjected to questionning about it when we head off on vacation tomorrow? Probably not because, you know, she doesn't look all foreign and stuff.
Guest #31: Free speech does not protect "FIRE!" in a crowded theater.
Go vote Kucinich
back in the 70s they had signs warning about making jokes about hijacking.
If this guy drives for Diamond Cab, I've been in his cab before, and he's an extreme nutjob. Could be someone else entirely, but he looks kind of familiar.
Joking and Thinking are now crimes here in Oceania and the people love it and accept it. You can get life in prison just for THINKING about blowing something up!