A woman is suing American Airlines after she alleges she was framed for trying to smuggle opiates into the U.S. by an airline employee who checked a bag full of drugs in her name.
Alison Dominguez of Florida claims in a lawsuit that workers at the Lynden Pindling Airport in Nassau, Bahamas, are checking bags under the names of passengers to the U.S., then having conspirators pick up that narcotics-containing luggage at baggage claim in the U.S.
The suit was first reported by Seamus Hughes’ Court Watch.
In April, Dominguez was arrested for allegedly trying to traffic more than 100 bottles of codeine in a bag, only for her to later be cleared of wrongdoing when it could be proven she never checked a bag at all, and this bag was checked in before she ever arrived at the airport.
“ALISON DOMINGUEZ and the relevant law enforcement agencies would later learn that an AMERICAN AIRLINES employee falsely checked the bag in ALISON DOMINGUEZ’s name as part of a drug importation scheme designed to take advantage of the U.S. Customs pre-clearance system, but not before ALISON DOMINGUEZ would spend almost a week imprisoned under horrific conditions as a result,” the suit explained.
Those “horrific conditions” include being “forced to sleep on a concrete floor of a cell—soiled with urine and feces—at times without access to bathroom facilities, at another time subject to threatened rape by a male inmate, and yet at another time told by the guards that she was potentially exposed to AIDS,” the suit said.
“Had AMERICAN AIRLINES bothered to verify this information before it identified ALISON DOMINGUEZ as a criminal to Bahamian authorities and U.S. Customs, ALISON DOMINGUEZ might have been spared this horrific experience,” the suit added.
KTLA reached out to American Airlines, and a response was not received before publication. This story will be updated if comment is received.
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