Meditating actor mistaken for terrorist on Paris plane

Ben Bassey 13:22 - 06 July 2015

Meditating Portuguese actor mistaken for terrorist on Paris plane

The suspect said the device also had the timer on, to tell him how long he had meditated, which probably caused associations with a bomb.

A Portuguese actor humming a prayer as he meditated to a sacred Tibetan text on board a plane awaiting takeoff from Paris, was mistaken for a terrorist by alarmed passengers and taken off the flight by police.

Heitor Lourenco said on Monday in Lisbon that police said had been denounced as a terrorism suspect aboard the plane because he was reciting the Koran aloud.

Lourenco, 47, said his text, which he was reading on a tablet device, contained Tibetan characters.

He said he was released after six hours of questioning, during which police watched videos of him on the Internet showing that he was a theater and television actor.

Lourenco said they also checked his profile on Wikipedia, which states that he was a Buddhist.