WASHINGTON, Sept 14: A delegation of 18 Yemeni citizens invited to Washington by the US State Department was held for five hours after arriving at Dulles International Airport while immigration officials questioned and fingerprinted them, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

At least one member of the delegation, which arrived here on Sept 3, was handcuffed for half-an-hour, the report said, pointing out that the treatment angered the visitors from Yemen, whose government has been a key US ally in the war against terrorism.

Besides businessmen and legislators invited to meetings with top US officials, the Yemeni delegation included cultural figures participating in “Windows on the Cultural Heritage of Yemen,” a symposium held from Sept 5 and 6 at the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery of Art. The event was sponsored by the Smithsonian, the State Department, the Yemen Embassy and the American Institute for Yemeni Studies.

The episode at Dulles is one of many recent cases in which Muslim air travellers have complained of being subjected to lengthy delays and sometimes being questioned by US law-enforcement officials for no apparent legitimate reason, the newspaper said.

Last month, two well-known Muslim scholars who live in the United States were questioned for several hours at US airports after travelling abroad. Ali A. Mazrui, 70, a professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton, said he was detained for more than seven hours at Miami International Airport and asked to explain his ideas on jihad. Radwan Masmoudi, who heads a Washington-based think tank that promotes democracy in the Middle East, was delayed four hours because of FBI questioning at a Detroit airport.

Asked about the treatment of the Yemenis at Dulles, Bill Anthony, a spokesman for US Customs and Border Protection, said the State Department had not notified immigration officials at the airport about their arrival.

Had it done so, the delegates would have been exempted from a special registration procedure involving fingerprinting and photographing — required for male visitors between the ages of 16 and 45 from about 20 designated countries, Mr Anthony said.