Airport security agents initially considered the odd assortment of objects in al-Maliki's rectum alarming enough to order an extra search of the flight he was planning to take. It had already taken off by then, but was diverted and landed in Las Vegas. Agents pulled off two bags checked by al-Maliki but found nothing suspicious in them.

[Al-Maliki] was flagged for extra screening at the security checkpoints. Larry Fetters, the federal security director at LAX, would not give details about what prompted the added scrutiny, but said al-Maliki's ethnicity "has nothing to do with it. It has to do with how you put your travels together."

Al-Maliki had checked two bags, both of which made it onto the flight without him, and both of which were removed in Las Vegas. TSA spokesman Nico Melendez said the agency no longer requires that bags be matched to passengers before they are loaded onto airplanes, because it screens every bag anyway.