AviationSaudi man arrested at Detroit airport with two pressure cookers in luggage
Hussain Al Khawahir, a Saudi citizen, was arrested Saturday at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after CBP agents found two pressure cookers in his luggage, and a page missing from his Saudi passport. He said he brought them for his nephew, a university student, because his nephew liked to cook lamb in a pressure cooker and U.S. pressure cookers were just not good enough.
Hussain al Kawahir with pressure cooker // Source: kfshat.com
Hussain Al Khawahir, a Saudi citizen, was arrested Saturday at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after CBP agents found two pressure cookers in his luggage, and a page missing from his Saudi passport.
The Washington Post reports that his nephew, Nasser Almarzooq, who is studying mechanical engineering at the University of Toledo in Ohio, said it was all a misunderstanding. He said he had asked his uncle to bring the pressure cookers with him because he liked to cook lamb in a pressure cooker, and that the pressure cooker he bought in the United States were just not good enough.
Al Khawahir first told the agents that he bought the pressure cooker for his nephew because pressure cookers were not sold in the United States.
The federal agents said that Al Khawahir’s passport had a page missing, and that he could not explain why the page was torn from the passport.
Al Marzook emphatically denied that either he or his uncle were up to no good.
“If I wanted to do something stupid like this, should I just take my uncle from Saudi Arabia to buy me a pressure cooker?” he said. “It’s legal here.”
Al Khawahir will be brought before a judge today.
