British Pair Arrested in United States on Terror Charges Over Tweet Joke
The Intel Hub
January 30, 2012
Two British tourists were arrested by the Department of Homeland Security and denied entry to the country after posting two tweets that were apparently considered terrorist threats by overzealous agents who did not posses even rudimentary knowledge of the difference between British and American English.
Leigh Van Bryan and Emily Bunting were detained and kept in a cell, occupied with Mexican drug dealers, for over 12 hours.
The tweets that caused their detention as possible terrorists were so obviously non threatening that the fact that agents tasked with protecting our country would not see this shows just how far down the police state hole America has actually gone.
The Daily Mail and others recently reported on this insane series of events:
“Two British tourists were barred from entering America after joking on Twitter that they were going to ‘destroy America’ and ‘dig up Marilyn Monroe’.
“Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.
“The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: ‘Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America’.
“After making their way through passport control at Los Angeles International Airport [LAX] last Monday afternoon the pair were detained by armed guards.
“Despite telling officials the term ‘destroy’ was British slang for ‘party,’ they were held on suspicion of planning to ‘commit crimes’ and had their passports confiscated.
The pair was also questioned over another tweet that one of them posted which quoted, word for word, a skit from the popular animated show, Family Guy.
The tweet above caused the DHS agents to search the pairs suitcases for spades and shovels.
That’s right, the agency tasked with protecting Americans spent hours searching a non threatening pair over tweets that quoted a popular TV show while any number of real terrorists could have easily slipped by. (Real terrorists most likely do not publicly tweet what they are about to do)
The agents, apparently happy over detaining innocent people, repeatedly ignored the fact that in Britain the use of the word destroy generally means to party.
‘I kept saying to them they had got the wrong meaning from my tweet but they just told me “you’ve really f***** up with that tweet boy”.
‘When I was in the van I was handcuffed and put in a cage. I had a panic attack but the worse was yet to come.
‘When we arrived at the prison I was shoved in a cell on my own but after an hour two huge Mexican men covered in tattoos came in and started asking me who I was.
Sadly, as the Department of Homeland Security continues their full scale takeover and destruction of the American spirit, ridiculous cases such as this will only increase.
Read a quote from the DHS memo on this ridiculous detention.
Follow @IntelHub
I woulnd’t be a tourist in this Hell Hole for the life of me if I lived outside the country, and if I had the resources, I’d LEAVE YESTERDAY!
This place is starting to make Zimbabwe look like paradise. Or maybe it already does.
One word describes the DHS – “fatuous.”
I’m an American living overseas and the LAST place I would go on this planet for a vacation is the US. It’s a police state and it’s getting worse every day. Freedom- definitely a thing of the past. Get out while you still can. Leaving was the best- and hardest- decision I ever made but I never looked back or regretted it once.
I made my last trip to the US in 2008. Not till the people have thrown off their security state handlers will I return.
With thousands of empowered Homeland Security agents running around with nothing better to do than harass tourists, the National Security Agency monitoring regular citizens, the Patroit Act, the nefarious NDAA of 2012, and ACTA, this is just the very beginning of the abuses that we are about to suffer. It’s not just Obama, it’s the whole out of control government using 9/11 to turn this country into a police state reminiscant of Orwell’s 1984. I only hope that we haven’t gone past the point of no return. Once a government bureaurocracy has been established, it’s there for good, whether it’s needed or not. The people are immune to the Federal Government going beyond what the Constitution allows and I’m afraid that the majority of our neighbors are apathetic narcissists who get thier news spoonfed to them from the mainstream media, which is operated by special interest parties spewing their agendas and these “sheep” are being led to the slaughter, and the tragedy of it is, they are willing to go. They believe the government is doing all of this to protect them even as FEMA is building hundreds of internment camps and the military is building training facilities based on US cities to train soldiers how to fight in our own country. This should be front page news! This should scare the bejesus out of every red blooded American, but all we care about is who Kim Kardashian is marrying this week. We’re in serious trouble and we don’t even know it.
Sadly, our country has become a total banana republic. This is nothing more than security theater, where halfwits play at “Let’s save the day.” In reality, of course, those who are really pulling the strings have us halfway to another unnecessary war with Iran, milked dry with no manufacturing sector and an economy in the toilet. The REAL terrorists in their Mcmansions and gated communities are never brought to any kind of justice; their evil ways continuously facilitated by an ever eager network of well paid cronies.
I was in the US the year before last and flying internally was a complete and utter nightmare. What with the ‘security’ lines, being ‘touched up’ by strangers or the option of being irradiated via the pervy x-ray machine. Flying internally in Australia, with its imperfections, after that became a pleasure. You don’t realise what you’ve got until you experience what others go through elsewhere.