Shoshana Hebshi, 'Half-Arab, half-Jewish' Ohio woman 'was ordered to strip, bend over and cough' after she was pulled off a plane in handcuffs

A woman who says she was ethnically targeted for a strip search at Detroit Metropolitan Airport has sued an airline and federal law enforcers.

Shoshana Hebshi, 36, was removed from a Frontier Airlines plane after it landed in Detroit from Denver on Sept. 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The plane's crew had reported suspicious behavior by two men who'd spent several minutes in the bathroom and were sitting near her.

Hebshi says she was ordered to remove her clothes, bend over and cough while she was searched.

The Sylvania, Ohio, woman filed suit Tuesday. She says she was targeted because she is half-Arab and half-Jewish.

She didn't know the men. No one was charged.

Frontier and the Transportation Security Administration won't comment on the lawsuit in Detroit federal court.

Hebshi's plane had just landed when she noticed that law enforcement officials were huddled in the rear of the plane.

But she says she was completely unaware that she had been singled out, along with the two other men sitting in her row, whom she described as Indian.

At the time, she had just sent a Tweet on her mobile phone saying '(c)ops in uniform and plainclothes huddle in rear of plane.'

Hebshi said: 'Someone shouted for us to place our hands on the seats in front of us, heads down.

'The cops ran down the aisle, stopped at my row and yelled at us to get up.

'One of the cops, grabbing my arm a little harder than I would have liked. He slapped metal cuffs on my wrists and pushed me off the plane.

'The three of us, two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and me, a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio, were being detained.'

In shock, she was held in small cell, strip-searched and then questioned by FBI agents.

'They had done some background check on me already because they knew I had been to Venezuela in 2001.

'They asked about my brother and my sister and asked about my foreign travel. They asked about my education and wanted my address, Social Security, phone number, Facebook, Twitter, pretty much my whole life story.

'I asked what was going on, and the man said judging from their line of questioning that I could probably guess, but that someone on the plane had reported that the three of us in row 12 were conducting suspicious activity.

'What is the likelihood that two Indian men who didn't know each other and a dark-skinned woman of Arab/Jewish heritage would be on the same flight from Denver to Detroit? Was that suspicion enough?

'Even considering that we didn't say a word to each other until it became clear there were cops following our plane?'

Mrs Hebshi was later released without charge, along with the two men.

But initial media reports claimed she and one of the other passengers had been 'making out' during the flight.

Frontier Flight 623, which had 116 passengers on board, landed without incident in Detroit at 3.30pm on Sunday - the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Security was already on high alert as memorials took place in the cities and the FBI released information on a credible but unconfirmed terror threat.

FBI Detroit spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold said ultimately authorities determined there was no real threat on the Denver to Detroit flight.

'Due to the anniversary of Sept. 11, all precautions were taken, and any slight inconsistency was taken seriously, Ms Berchtold said.

'The public would rather us err on the side of caution than not.'

Mrs Hebshi has since vowed not to fly again on September 11.