By IANS,
Toronto : Fed up with repeated detentions at American airports for seven years, a Canadian businessman, whose name figures mistakenly on the US ‘no-fly’ list, has changed his name to dodge airport security.
Montreal-based Mario Labbe, who wonders how his name landed on the US terror watch list, has added the word Francois to his name to avoid grilling and detention at US airports.
He says he wrote to the US Department of Homeland Security to remove his name from the watch list. But the department wrote back saying his name was included in 2004 probably after he became a victim of identity theft.
Labbe told a TV channel that he is clueless about his identity theft and thus “now my official name is Francois Mario Lobbe”.
The Canadian businessman is one of the more than a million names on the US terror watch list – prepared after 9/11 to keep suspected terrorists off flights.
The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group says 25,000 more names are added to the list each month.
Labbe, who has travelled to the US every month since 9/11, says each time he steps in for check-in, US customs computers sound an alert after scanning his passport.
“It’s always the same questions, about if I’ve lost my passport, if I’ve been to Japan – I don’t know why Japan, but in their file it was something to do with Japan,” he says.
He says he is separated from others and subjected to extra scrutiny. “You have to wait your turn to finally be released an hour, an hour and a half, two hours, whatever it is after. Once I was caught in Miami like that for six hours,” he says.
The change in name may spare him hassles at US airports but it has added to headaches in Canada where he has to change everything about himself.
“You have to change everything: driver’s licence, social insurance, medicare, credit card – everything.”
But Labbe is happy that he can now dodge US computers.
Funnily enough, the US ‘no-fly’ list includes many prominent American names, including the famous Senator Edward Kennedy, former US assistant attorney general James Robinson and CNN journalist Drew Griffin.
Reports say 32,000 Americans have applied to the Department of Homeland Security to remove their names from the ‘no-fly’ list.