Removed Passengers Identified as Qatari

In the years since terrorists hijacked and crashed airliners Sept. 11, 2001, numerous incidents have been made public in which passengers were removed from flights after arousing suspicion.

However, the Sunday incident appeared to be the first in which those removed turned out to be government officials.

Criteria for removing passengers have not been spelled out in detail.

In an August incident, passengers told the San Francisco Chronicle that five people with Romanian passports were removed from a San Francisco-to-London flight before takeoff.

One passenger told the newspaper that the airplane's captain had announced: "There are some people on the plane that we do not feel comfortable flying with."

"You take into account any number of behavior patterns," Doyle, of the air marshal service, said yesterday.

"It's not about race. It's someone doing something a little odd. It's not criminal. It's just a little odd," Doyle said.

One of the passengers on the Sunday flight, William Epke, said another passenger told him that the men deemed suspicious "were doing all kinds of funny hand signals between them.

"She said it was very strange," Epke said. "There was a lot of communication between the men and a lot by hand signal."

Staff writer Allan Lengel contributed to this report.