Transgender Model Threatened Heathrow Security During "Ma'am" Row

Guilty: Camicia

A sex-change model, who mistakenly believed muslim Heathrow security staff called her: “Man” got in the face of one officer and shouted: “This guy hates transgenders and wishes me dead.”

Frequent flyer Francesca Camicia, 23, who was travelling to Italy for breast augmentation shouted: “You’re the terrorist,” during a two-hour meltdown.

Camicia, of Lanark Road, Hammersmith, who is identified as female on both her British and Italian passports, told Ealing Magistrates Court yesterday: “When someone calls me ‘man’ I feel so desolated.”

She was convicted of using threatening behaviour towards Mustafa Abbas and supervisor Fahad Arshad on September 17 and was conditionally discharged for two years.

Camicia, who was the subject of an extensive shoot in photography magazine Lens, was also ordered to pay each victim £50 compensation and £750 costs.

Mr. Abbas insisted he addressed Camicia as “ma’am” during secondary security checks in busy Terminal 4. “That’s when the abuse began,” he told the trial.

“She said: ‘Don’t talk to me like a dog, you need to learn some education, you f***ing idiot.’

“She said it with disgust and was looking down at me and made me feel worthless, like I am nothing as if I am a peasant.

“She said: ‘You earn six pounds an hour and you think you are God.’

“She had a bit of an attitude on her. Stroppy.”

He reported the incident to supervisor Mr. Arshad, who told the court: “She refused to stop and completely lost control. Just mad, I couldn’t speak to her.

“She completely lost the plot, saying that she was transgender and that I wished death on all transgenders. She was in a blind rage.

“She pointed at my beard and said: ‘I should be afraid of you. You are the terrorist’

“She said I was homosexual and made an oral sex gesture with her hand.

Threatened: Arshad

“I have never come across anyone that angry or unpredictable in seven years at Heathrow. I felt intimidated when she came close to my face and poked my shoulder with her fingers.

“She said: ‘You’re peasants. I’ll buy this f***ing airport, this f***ing plane.’

“To be called a terrorist because of how I look is disgusting and she lost control with the police as well.”

The court heard Camicia also shouted: “I’ve been a woman for twenty years. To call me ’Sir’ is a crime. I’ve got a diplomatic passport, you can’t do anything to me, I know my rights.”

Camicia, who has a PhD in law, was upset there was no Jewish Torah on which to swear an oath. “It’s okay. My rights are breached everyday,” she told the court.

“Since I was born I felt like a woman and it has been a real struggle, it has been hell, but I’ve been so strong.

“I am here today, but I shouldn’t be. I’m proud to be a woman, proud to be a transexual woman.”

The court heard Camicia has undergone fifteen gender reassignment surgical procedures and she claims to be insulted by Heathrow staff whenever she passes through.

“Every time I walk past they insult me. I have been travelling ten years through the same airport with the same people, I know them.

“They laugh at me, they hate me, you can feel it. 

“I did not insult anybody. I felt so harassed and threatened. I’m not dangerous, I’m not a threat.”