Talal Al Rooqi with the offending pressure cooker.
A young Saudi Arabian student living in Michigan claims American cops issued him with a warning after he was seen outside carrying a pressure cooker full of rice to a friend’s house for dinner.
Talal Al Rooqi told Saudi daily Okaz that police officers warned him to “be careful while handling such items in public” after a neighbor saw him out with the cooker and panicked.
Pressure cookers were used in the bombings at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured hundreds more.
Al Rooqi added: “I was having breakfast when the police came over and told me that they wanted to ask me some questions.
“I became tense even though I had done nothing wrong and I had nothing to hide. They were very calm and asked if they could come in. Their questions were about my education in the U.S., the date of my arrival in the country and my activities outside the university.
“I told them that I carried a pressure cooker that Saudis used to cook rice over to a friend’s flat where we had dinner together. I informed them that I brought it home the next day and they asked to see it. After they were able to see it, they told me to be careful while handling such items in public.”
He said he reported the incident to the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, D.C., which reported that a number of Saudi students in the U.S. had their homes raided, without anything being found, in the aftermath of the Boston bombing.
