The day following the incident, Shahin, the spokesperson for the group, spoke to the press that had gathered when he returned to a US Airways ticket counter to buy new tickets for the group. He told media that the incident was "humiliating, the worst moment of my life," and asked, "To practice your faith and pray is a crime in America?" When US Airways would not issue him and the other imams new tickets he called for a boycott of the airline, and said, "I'm not going to stay silent... I came to this country to enjoy justice and freedom". He has said it is incorrect that any of the men had one-way tickets, and that he had alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the conference in order to prevent this kind of incident from occurring.