CEREDO (US), Aug 18: A Pakistani woman whose daughter’s carry-on luggage caused an airport in the United States to shut down for more than nine hours says it was her ethnic background, not a few bottles of suspicious liquids, that set off security officials.

Initial laboratory testing by the Federal Bureau of Investigation turned up no evidence of explosive materials in the bottles carried at Tri-State Airport in West Virginia by 28-year-old Rima Qayyum dressed in traditional head cover.

The suspect’s mother Mian Qayyum of Jackson, Michigan, told AP that her daughter was four months pregnant, she lived in Barboursville and was innocent. “It was not only a false alarm, it was racial discrimination because there was nothing,” she said. —AP