REYKJAVIK: Iceland’s government said yesterday that it had summoned the US ambassador to Reykjavik to protest the treatment of an Icelandic tourist who says she was recently shackled and humiliated before being deported from JFK airport in New York.
Erla Osk Arnardottir, 33, arrived at the John F Kennedy International Airport last Sunday for a pre-holiday shopping trip in New York City, and was detained for having overstayed a tourist visa to the US by three weeks in 1995.
“I have been handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep, been without food and drink and been confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned,” Arnardottir wrote in a blog on Wednesday.
She admitted to having overstayed her visa more than a decade ago, but said she had traveled back to the US since without incidence and did not realise the transgression would create problems for her on her latest trip.
According to a statement from the US embassy in Reykjavik, Arnardottir’s lapse meant she was not eligible for a visa waiver-programme that Icelandic citizens otherwise are entitled to and needed a visa to travel to the US.
Arnardottir does not dispute that US authorities had the right to deport her, but is incensed over the harsh treatment she received during the 24 hours she was held in custody before being placed on a flight back to Iceland.
“They were treating me like a very dangerous criminal. A chain was fastened around my waist and I was handcuffed to the chain. Then my legs were placed in chains,” she wrote in her blog.
She said that she had been denied food and water for more than 14 hours, had not been permitted to sleep or to make a phone call to inform her family and friends of her whereabouts and had been transported to a prison in New Jersey.
She also said she had been body-searched and submitted to hostile, aggressive and humiliating interrogations, and had been asked questions like “When did you have your last period?” and “Have you ever tried to commit suicide?”
Arnardottir’s account of her ordeal sparked outrage across Iceland, an Arctic island nation of some 300,000 people.
Yesterday Foreign Minister Ingibjorg Solrum Gisladottir summoned US Ambassador Carol Van Voorst to protest Arnardottir’s treatment and demand an apology, the foreign ministry said. – AFP