Arabic, African sounding names were targeted during Heathrow's 'racial' terror checks: Official

London, Oct 8 (ANI): Terror checks at Britain's Heathrow airport were 'racial,' and the counter-terrorism officials regularly put passengers with Arabic and African names on a security database, an official who worked with the airport authorities has claimed.

Former Detective Constable Kevin Maxwell said Metropolitan Police detectives would routinely sift through landing cards of foreign nationals and randomly type their details into a police database, without ever seeing the passengers, the Telegraph reports.

Maxwell, who worked at Heathrow's Terminals 3 and 5 between 2008 and 2010, said that his colleagues working in the counter-terrorism unit at Terminal 5 would take the landing cards filled in by visitors from an unmanned Border Agency desk, and copied the details into the police's database.

He claimed that the practice was widespread throughout the counter terrorism unit at Heathrow, to keep up the Metropolitan Police stop figures.

"In order to keep up their stop figures my colleagues would attend the UK Border Agency desk when unstaffed and take a handful of landing cards that had been filled in by passengers who had long gone," the paper quoted Maxwell, as saying.

"My colleagues would then sift through the cards they had taken, looking for passengers with what they considered obvious non-white names including Arabic and African sounding names," he said.

"These passengers would then be processed by the information from the landing cards being put into a police database as if they had been stopped," he added.

The former officer, who is black and homosexual, was giving evidence at an employment tribunal, where he is suing the force for homophobic attitudes and racial discrimination.

Maxwell said counter-terrorism officers would target black and Asian people for random stops in a queue at the airport.

To avoid being seen as racist, another officer would also talk to a white person directly in front of them, but the white person's details would not be entered into the police database.

Maxwell, of Islington, central London, is presently facing dismissal from the force after being off sick since July 2009.

He said he developed depression after being bullied at work due to his race and sexual orientation. (ANI)

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