An employment tribunal has dismissed all discrimination claims brought by a Heathrow security officer who alleged she was discriminated against because of her race and religion after being asked to remove a pro-Palestine badge from her staff lanyard.
Zara Saiyed sued Heathrow Airport Ltd, claiming the demand to remove the emblem was equivalent to asking her to remove her hijab and that the airport was complicit in the deaths of Palestinian children. The tribunal, however, found that the airport had repeatedly investigated her complaints and sought to resolve the issues.
The dispute began in November 2023 when a colleague challenged Ms. Saiyed, a Muslim security officer and former Unite Union representative, about the badge. The following day, Ms. Saiyed filed a grievance, asserting the flag was a significant expression of her identity and beliefs, and that its requested removal constituted discrimination.
In her correspondence with airport management, Ms. Saiyed wrote that demanding the removal of the Palestinian flag was "tantamount to finding my hijab offensive and insisting on its removal." She also accused Heathrow of being "complicit in the killing of Palestinian babies," suggesting the airport's response to her grievances supported the oppression of Palestinians.
Ms. Saiyed raised numerous additional complaints concerning internal meetings, diversity events, communications with managers, and the airport's decision not to publish a Ramadan video featuring her. One grievance focused on her being muted during an online Race Equality Matters event, which she believed was part of discriminatory treatment. The tribunal determined this incident was accidental.
The tribunal's review of the evidence led it to conclude that Heathrow had actively investigated Ms. Saiyed's complaints, engaged in numerous meetings with her, and attempted to find resolutions. The panel also noted that Ms. Saiyed was spoken to by Heathrow Airport intelligence officers as the dispute escalated, a meeting she cited as support for her case, though the tribunal found it did not advance her discrimination claims.
The tribunal's judgment was critical of Ms. Saiyed's evidence, stating she was "susceptible to hyperbole" and capable of "misinterpreting, misunderstanding and/or misremembering" events. The panel found she had become "swept along with her own inaccurate narrative" and that she could believe something to be true even when contemporaneous documents showed otherwise.
In contrast, the tribunal found Heathrow's witnesses did not exhibit similar tendencies and gave preference to the airport's documentation, including emails, meeting notes, and witness accounts, when evidence conflicted. The panel found no evidence that Heathrow's actions were motivated by Ms. Saiyed's race or religion. It concluded that the decisions made were management responses to a complex workplace dispute, not unlawful discrimination.
Consequently, the tribunal dismissed all of Ms. Saiyed's claims of direct race and religious discrimination, harassment, and victimisation. The ruling stated that while Ms. Saiyed genuinely believed she had been wronged, the evidence did not support her allegations against her employer.
The case occurred against a backdrop of wider controversy at Heathrow regarding Palestinian symbols worn by staff following the outbreak of the Gaza war. In June 2024, five security officers were removed from screening an El Al flight to Tel Aviv after passengers reported feeling intimidated by Palestinian flags and watermelon badges on their uniforms. Heathrow had previously stated that all passengers should feel "safe and welcome" and that staff were expected to adhere to uniform policies, with unauthorized items to be removed.