🇺🇸 CINCINNATI, Ohio — Nazia Ali had removed her sneakers, finished sending a text message to her parents and was putting on headphones and settling into her seat for the nine-hour flight from Paris to Cincinnati when a Delta Air Lines crew member approached her and her husband, Faisal.
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What happened next would overshadow the good times they'd enjoyed: A flight crew member had complained to the pilot that she was uncomfortable with the Muslim couple in the second row of economy class. The woman was wearing a head scarf and using a phone, and the man was sweating, she allegedly told the pilot.
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The pilot contacted the ground crew. He would not take off until couple was removed.
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"We had been in our seats for 45 minutes," Nazia Ali, 34, said Thursday from the Cincinnati area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). "The ground agent said, `Can you step out with me? We'd like to ask you a few questions.' So I said, `Do you want us to get our things?' And he said, `Yes, please grab all of your personal belongings. You're not going to be on this flight.' "
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In the wake of the couple's removal from the flight, the Muslim advocacy group filed a religious profiling complaint against Delta Air Lines to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
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