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Oslo airport stops tourist with 'terrorist name'

The Local Norway
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Oslo airport stops tourist with 'terrorist name'

A Swedish man set to take off on his "dream holiday" to Mexico was turned away before boarding, as Oslo flight officials claimed he shared the name of a wanted terrorist.

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“I was told that I couldn’t board the flight,” Abdifateh Ahmed Mohamed told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

“They said I was a terrorist. I’ve never been suspected of a crime in my whole life."

When he was detained on Monday, it wasn't the first time that Mohamed, 30, has met with problems at international border controls.

This time it was border police at Gardermoen Airport that delayed the processing of his ticket.

After a call to the United States, a decision was made that he would not be allowed to board the flight, according to Aftonbladet.

Mohamed's two travelling companions, who were allowed to continue, had to leave him behind. Airport personnel recommended him to contact the American Embassy in Oslo, where staff said they were unable to help him.

Stranded in the Norwegian capital, Mohamed had little option but to take a flight back to Arlanda Airport in Sweden.

“We’d planned the trip for so long. I was so damn irritated. What can I do? I feel powerless and offended,” he told Aftonbladet.

“My friends who don’t have Muslim names can go straight through while I am taken into a room by the side of the desk. I am actually thinking about getting rid of the name ‘Ahmed’ as it’s always that bit which causes problems,” said Mohamed, who works for the Swedish Migration Board.

It is unclear why American officials got involved in the case, as the passenger was heading elsewhere.

“As the traveller wasn’t travelling to, or through, the United States, this case shouldn’t have had anything to do with American authorities,” Chris Dunnett at the US Embassy in Stockholm told Aftonbladet.

The FBI has had the Egyptian terrorist Ahmed Mohammed Hamed Ali on its most wanted list ever since the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

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