Six Iraqi-American "cultural sensitivity" trainers give American Airlines an F. They are suing the company for its response last August, after a passenger raised suspicions about them speaking Arabic on a flight.

"They treated me like a terrorist; I'm anything but a terrorist," said David al-Watan, one of the plaintiffs in the case. "We didn't do anything wrong, but they made everybody scared of us."

Al-Watan, Talal Cholagh, Ali Alzerej, Hassan Alzerej, Hussein Alsalih and Mohammad Al-Saedy, some of whom are U.S. citizens, are seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensatory damages for hours of detainment, interrogation, public humiliation and embarrassment.

They had just left California's Camp Pendleton, where they had conducted classes in Iraqi customs, culture and etiquette for the U.S. Marine Corps. They were en route to their homes inn Michigan when the incident occurred.

The airline ordered all 113 passengers to disembark and rescheduled the flight for the next day, due to San Diego International Airport's 11:30 p.m. flight curfew. The six men say they were segregated and detained in front of other passengers for over an hour while airline personnel helped passengers secure lodging for the night.

The men worked for Defense Training Systems, a unit of International Logistics Services Corp. of Anchorage, Alaska.

American Airlines has not publicly commented on the case.