More Britons call for passenger profiling

'Practice positive profiling'
He cites the example of Anne Marie Murphy, identified as an anomaly by Israeli profiling at Heathrow Airport in 1986 because she was a pregnant young Irishwoman, traveling alone to Tel Aviv. When searched, she was found to be carrying a bomb in her handbag, placed there by her Jordanian boyfriend.

“We should practice positive profiling — you look for those people who pose an extremely low threat, for example people who look like a family, act like a family and interact with the outside world like a family,” Baum said.

“You cannot say, ‘let’s pull aside all Asian males.’ That would be wrong, and it would not be good security sense.”

But Muslim leaders fear profiling will inevitably mean more Muslims are searched, alienating a community that already feels it has borne the brunt of police stop-and-search tactics since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Terrorists in 'all shapes and sizes'
“What you are suggesting is that we should have a new offense in this country called ‘traveling whilst Asian,”’ said Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Ali Dizaei.

“That’s unpalatable to everyone. It is communities that defeat terrorism, and what we don’t want to do is actually alienate the very communities who are going to help us catch terrorists,” Dizaei told British Broadcasting Corp. television.

Dizaei argued that terrorists “come in all shapes and sizes.”

Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber apprehended aboard a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001, was a mixed-race convert to Islam. Three of those arrested in the airplane plot were also converts.

“Muslims are not an ethnic group and come from many different backgrounds including from the black community and increasingly from the white community,” said Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain.

“There is concern that such profiling would perhaps only contribute to further alienating a group whose close cooperation is essential in countering terror.”

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