Saudi man with pressure cooker arrested in Detroit

Detroit: A Saudi man was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after federal agents said he lied about why he was travelling with a pressure cooker, but his nephew said on Monday that it was all a misunderstanding about a device he simply wanted for cooking.

Two pressure cookers were used in last month’s Boston Marathon bombings.

Hussain Al Khawahir was being held in Detroit on allegations of lying to Customs and Border Protection agents and of using a passport with a missing page. He was arrested on Saturday.

His nephew, Nasser Al Marzouq, told AP that he had asked his uncle to bring him the pressure cooker so he could make lamb. The college student said two pressure cookers he bought in the US were “not good at all” and said the ones available in Saudi Arabia are higher quality.

“I’m Arabic,” said Al Marzouq, who is studying mechanical engineering at the University of Toledo in Ohio, south of Detroit. “I always use pressure cookers to cook.”

Al Marzouq said his uncle was coming to visit him for a couple weeks.

A criminal complaint alleges that Al Khawahir arrived at the airport on Saturday on a flight from Saudi Arabia via Amsterdam, and that he told agents he was visiting his nephew.

He originally said he brought the pressure cooker with him because pressure cookers aren’t sold in America, then later said his nephew had bought one but it “was cheap” and broke after one use, according to the complaint.

Agents said they also noticed a page was missing from Al Khawahir’s passport from Saudi Arabia. He told them he didn’t how it had been removed, and said the document had been locked in a box that only he, his wife and three children have access to in his home, according to the complaint.