User:Geo Swan/Review/Asif Iqbal (Rochester, NY)

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Asif Iqbal is a management consultant, a legal resident of the United States, born in Pakistan. He is notable because he plans to sue the US government because he is regularly detained when he tries to fly, because he has the same name as a former Guantanamo detainee. Iqbal first started to be detained while flying in February 2002. His problems with the "no-fly-list" have triggered comment back in Pakistan.

Iqbal is a legal resident of the United States since the early 1990s. He is a graduate of the University of Texas.

In an article about widespread problems with the "no-fly-list" Jane Black, writing in Business Week, described the first occasion when he was blocked from flying. He was detained, and questioned, and shortly after he missed his flight, airline and security officials established that he was who he said he was. They assured him that this would not happen again. However, when he arrived at the airport the next day, to finally complete his trip, he was detained again. Iqbal was eventually informed that he could expect to be detained, because his name matched that of another individual, each and every time he flew.

Iqbal wrote to his Congressional Representative, Louise Slaughter, stating :
 * {| class="wikitable" border="1"


 * ''"I completely understand the measures taken by airport security since the September 11 attacks. But isn't American airport-security technology more advanced than this current program?"
 * ''"I expected so much more from the United States government and find myself very disappointed by it at this time."
 * }
 * }

Jessica Wehrman, writing in the Deseret Evening News, described Iqbal's unsuccessful attempts to appeal to the Transportation Security Administration to get his name removed from the list. Iqbal described the embarrassment he feels when other passengers see him being detained, and how they continue to look upon him with mistrust if security officials are able to clear him in time to catch his flight.

Chris Rhatigan, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, told Wehrman that Iqbal should have appealed to his organization's ombudsman. Iqbal says he has repeatedly appealed to the organization's staff, and that one staff member suggested he should deal with his problem by officially changing his name.

Iqbal's work requires a lot of travel, and, even though the Guantanamo detainee has been released, his name remains on the no-fly list, and Iqbal the software consultant experiences frequent, highly unpleasant, unpredictable delays and missed flights.

In August 2004 Iqbal sued CBS Evening News for airing a picture of him, identifying him as the Guantanamo captive.

On 13 April 2005 Iqbal added the Associated Press to the lawsuit. He claimed that the Associated Press used a photo of him, originally used to illustrate his mistaken identity problems, to illustrate articles about his namesake, the former Guantanamo captive. He claimed that the Associated Press had distributed his photo accompanying stories about his namesake in May, August and October of 2004.