Popular vlogger Nuseir Yassin – known to his fans as Nas - missed New Year’s Eve in Malta after getting into a scrap with security guards at Barcelona airport.
In a blog post, Nas’s girlfriend Alyne Tamir gives a blow-by-blow account of how an argument with security officials ended with the two in handcuffs, missing their flight, and ringing in the New Year in an airport hotel rather than in Malta.
The two ended up in the altercation after Alyne tried to shoot a video in the security area.
“I was just tackled in the Barcelona airport by the security guards. I can’t believe it happened. This is not the kind of stuff that I’d expect to happen to me. I am a middle class woman with zero police history of any kind,” she said in a blog post uploaded on New Year’s Eve.
Read: Disappointed vlogger asks that 'Oh My Malta' slogan not be used for politics
The blogger claimed she was pushed, grabbed, handcuffed, and shoved to the ground by a male and female security guards.
Detailing the alleged encounter, she says her shirt was ripped open and her hand crushed by airport security officials.
“The man ‘security guard’ tried to arrest me because I was holding my phone filming. He put on gloves, and prepared his handcuffs and scraped them across my body on my chest, ripping open my shirt as I screamed,” she writes.
The blog explains how Alyne, Nas, and the team from Nas Daily on Facebook, went two hours early to the airport to check in for their flight to Malta on Monday.
Alyne and Nas filming one of their features in Malta in April.However, they soon encountered a problem with their tickets as Air Malta had “generously” upgraded them for the final leg of their journey to the island. According to the blog, this led to some confusion at the check-in desk.
“The customer service people on the phone got impatient and were rude. We could hear them through the phone. The woman got flustered and stressed and upset, and it triggered “the monster”."
The "monster", it turns out, was a "bald, small middle aged male employee" who heard the phone call with ticketing personnel and decided "it was all our fault.”
Watch: Nas Daily on Times Talk
The blog details how the man allegedly started saying things like “If you say another word I’ll make sure you don’t get on your flight” and “I have the power to stop you from boarding”.
It would have been nice to be in Malta where I feel safer and taken care of
When they were finally given their boarding passes, Nuseir took a photo of the desk.
“They saw him and ran at us, yelling and trying to take his photo, threatening him and being crazy in general,” according to the blog post.
In the end they missed their flight as a result of the ensuing pandemonium.
“We booked an airport hotel and this is where we are spending New Year (instead of in a lovely suite with the team at the Hilton in Malta – so sorry we couldn’t make it!)... It would have been nice to be in Malta where I feel safer and taken care of.”
She ends her blog by saying she had asked for the airport’s CCTV recording of the incident to be reviewed “so hopefully at least the male worker will be fired”.
The daily online programme Nas Daily will come to an end on Saturday after 1,000 editions - the vlogger chose Malta for his final one-minute feature after a successful run of programmes last April.
Read: Top vlogger Nas Daily given warm welcome in Malta