Bizarre Behavior of Imams on US Airways Flight

This Washington TImes article included a couple of facts that I hadn't seen in earlier discussions:

The passengers and flight crew said the imams prayed loudly before boarding; switched seating assignments to a configuration used by terrorists in previous incidents; asked for seat-belt extensions, which could be used as weapons; and shouted hostile slogans about al Qaeda and the war in Iraq.

Flight attendants said three of the six men, who did not appear to be overweight, asked for the seat-belt extensions, which include heavy metal buckles, and then threw them to the floor under their seats.

Robert MacLean, a former federal air marshal, expressed the fear yesterday that the situation "will make crews and passengers in the future second-guess reporting these events, thus compromising the aircraft's security out of fear of being labeled a dogmatist or a bigot, or being sued." . . . .

Also note this:

The imams left their assigned seats shortly before takeoff in violation of the rules . . . .

This is supposedly an overreaction by the passengers and the airplane crew? If so, I don't know what would be. I suppose that there is a small chance that this wasn't a deliberate provocative act, but it surely is reasonable to ask these gentlemen to leave the plane until everything can be checked.