WASHINGTON: Muhammad Ali Jr. was detained and questioned at a Washington airport before being allowed to board a flight to Fort Lauderdale after meeting with lawmakers to discuss a separate airport detention incident last month, a lawyer for the late heavyweight champion’s son said Friday.
Ali and his mother, Khalilah Camacho Ali, were stopped at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after returning from Jamaica on Feb. 7. They traveled to Washington on Wednesday without incident to speak to members of a congressional subcommittee on border security about that experience.
But attorney Chris Mancini said that when Ali attempted to board a JetBlue Airways flight home to Florida on Friday he was detained for 20 minutes. Mancini said Ali spoke to Department of Homeland Security officials by telephone and showed his driver’s license and passport before he was allowed to board.
“None of this was happening Wednesday,” Mancini said in a telephone interview Friday afternoon as he was traveling with the Alis. “Going to Washington obviously opened up a can of worms at DHS.”
A spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration acknowledged the agency confirmed Ali’s identity before he boarded his plane.
Spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said Ali also was patted down because his jewelry set off a checkpoint scanner alarm.
Florida Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was on the same flight, tweeted a photo with Ali after he was allowed to board and wrote: “On way home on DOMESTIC FLIGHT Muhammad Ali Jr. detained AGAIN ... Religiously profiling son of ‘The Greatest’ will not make us safe.”
The mother and son, both born in the United States, have said in interviews that they believe they have been stopped because they are Muslim with Arabic names. Earlier this week, they announced a campaign for religious freedom in the spirit of the boxing icon, supported by ex-boxing greats Evander Holyfield, Larry Holmes, Roberto Duran and others. They say they are opposed to President Donald Trump’s travel ban, which they feel unfairly targets Muslims.
Muhammad Ali’s son says he was detained again at airport
Muhammad Ali’s son says he was detained again at airport
EU parliament approves 90-bn-euro loan for Ukraine amid US cuts
- awmakers voted by 458 to 140 in favor of the loan, intended to cover two-thirds of Ukraine’s financial needs for 2026 and 2027
The EU parliament on Wednesday approved a 90-billion-euro loan for Ukraine, providing a financial lifeline to cash-strapped Kyiv four years into Russia’s invasion.
Lawmakers voted by 458 to 140 in favor of the loan, intended to cover two-thirds of Ukraine’s financial needs for 2026 and 2027 and backed by the EU’s common budget — after plans to tap frozen Russian central bank assets fell by the wayside.
Military aid to Ukraine hit its lowest level in 2025 as the US pulled funding, leaving Europe almost alone in footing the bill and averting a complete collapse, the Kiel Institute said Wednesday.
Kyiv's allies allocated 36 billion euros ($42.9 billion) in military aid in 2025, down 14 percent from 41.1 billion euros the previous year, according to Kiel, which tracks military, financial and humanitarian assistance pledged and delivered to Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion.
Military aid in 2025 was even lower than in 2022, despite the invasion not taking place until February 24 that year.
US aid came to a complete halt with President Donald Trump's return to the White House in early 2025.
Washington provided roughly half of all military assistance between 2022 and 2024.
European countries have thus made a significant effort to plug the gap, increasing their collective allocation by 67 percent in 2025 compared with the 2022-2024 average.
Without that effort, the US cuts could have been even more damaging, the institute argued.
However, the think tank points to "growing disparities" among European contributors, with Northern and Western European countries accounting for around 95 percent of military aid.
The institute calculated that Northern European countries (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden) provided 33 percent of European military aid in 2025, despite accounting for only eight percent of the combined GDP of European donor countries.
Southern Europe, which accounts for 19 percent of the combined GDP of European donors, contributed just three percent.
To help fill the gap left by the United States, NATO launched the PURL programme, under which European donors purchased US weapons for Ukraine, worth 3.7 billion euros in 2025.
Kiel called the initiative a "notable development", which had enabled the acquisition of Patriot air-defense batteries and HIMARS multiple-launch rocket systems.
European allies are also increasingly placing orders with Ukraine's own defence industry, following a trend started by Denmark in 2024.
War-torn Ukraine's defence production capacity has "grown by a factor of 35" since 2022, according to Kiel, but Kyiv lacks the funds to procure enough weapons to keep its factories working at full capacity.
Orders from 11 European donor countries helped bridge that gap last year.
In the second half of 2025, 22 percent of weapons purchases for Ukraine were procured domestically, a record high.
