DAMAGES UPHELD IN PASSENGER'S SEARCH

A federal judge in San Francisco upheld $450,000 in damages Friday for a
woman who was held for 22 hours by airport Customs agents, strip-searched
and forced to take repeated doses of a laxative in a fruitless search for
drugs.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker rejected a government lawyer;s argument
that the agents had acted reasonably. He also said the damages were not
excessive or punitive.

Amanda Buritica, 50, of Port Chester, N.Y., a Colombian-born U.S. citizen,
was returning from Hong Kong, part of a round-the-world trip when she was
detained at San Francisco International Airport in September 1994. After a
luggage search, she was patted down, strip-searched, X-rayed, then sent to
a hospital.