Yemen officially protests mistreatment at US airport [Archives:2003/670/Front Page]

Sana'a, Sept. 20)Yemen has officially protested on Wednesday in a formal letter sent to the White House the mistreatment of the Yemeni cultural delegation at the hands of American airport security in the latest visit to the USA.
The Washington Post had re ported that the delegation of 18 guests invited to Washington by the U.S. State Department was held for five hours after arriving at Dulles International Airport while immigration officials questioned and fingerprinted them.
The Sept. 3 incident, during which one member of the delegation was handcuffed for half an hour, angered the visitors, who represented members of the Shura council plus other prominent intellectuals and officials.
“I was in shock. If things are going to continue like this, why should I come to this country?” said Yahya al Habbari, 44, a member of Yemen's legislature who had come to meet with senior trade and agriculture officials. Al-Habbari, who travels on a diplomatic passport and has been to the United States dozens of times for his business as an importer of U.S. crops, said, “I'd rather import Australian or Canadian wheat and save myself problems.”
The official protest comes days after the delegation completed what has been called “a series of successful activities in promoting Yemen-US understanding” by the delegates.
According to the Yemen Observer, which was invited to the event, the event was a “massive success, well beyond the expectations of the organizers.”
The newspaper added that the symposium was sponsored by “Yemen's Embassy in the US, the Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian Institution, the American Institute for Yemeni Studies, the Foundation for the Protection of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, the US Embassy in Yemen, and the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Yemen with cooperation from the Bead Museum in Washington, DC and other French and German institutions. “
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