Tsunami diplomat went 'berserk' on plane after binge

A British diplomat went berserk after a drinking binge on his flight home from tsunami aid work in Thailand, a court heard today.

Colonel Peter Roberts, the British defence attaché in Thailand, hurled obscene abuse at other passengers in business class, threatened to kill cabin staff, grabbed at women, and struggled free of the plastic ties binding his wrists and ankles to subdue him, it was alleged.

He was arrested when his flight landed at Heathrow and then tried to punch and kick police officers, Isleworth Crown Court in London heard.

As fellow passengers and cabin staff tried to restrain him during the Etihad Airways flight, Roberts was said to have shouted obscenities and demanded: "Do you know who I am? I’m the head of the British Government in Thailand and you’re treating me like this."

Colonel Roberts had boarded flight EY303 from Abu Dhabi on February 17 last year and was due to give a presentation on the tsunami when he got back, the court heard. He denied a charge of being drunk on an aircraft. The court heard he had been taking the antidepressant drug seroxat, which should not be taken with alcohol.

Gareth Rees, QC, prosecuting, said that Colonel Roberts had been drinking wine on his previous connecting flight from Bangkok to Abu Dhabi, and whisky in the airport. Once aboard the London-bound plane he had drunk two or three of the small bottles of wine served by airlines, followed by three Black Label whiskies and some port.

Kevin McGuire, who sat next to him, said he was initially pleasant. "It soon became obvious he was an important man in a very important position. He said he would soon be making a presentation about the recent tsunami in Asia.

"He showed me some pictures from his folder about the tsunami which I found quite disturbing. For lunch he had drunk a couple of bottles of wine, some port and some whisky but continued to be politely sociable."

Later, Roberts started grabbing the arms of passing cabin crew and asking for more whisky, Mr McGuire said, and he seemed to become more inebriated. Soon he began getting up and talking to other passengers and crew.

"He told me he had been speaking to an African woman and was a bit concerned because he thought she might be important and married to a king and her son a prince. He thought he might have said something unfortunate," said Mr McGuire.

"He began rocking back and forth as if in a rage and was also crying. Then he fell asleep but people were looking."

Later he started mumbling and swearing and then got up and grabbed the African woman and swore at her.

Mr McGuire said: "I elbowed him in the face and put him in a headlock. I asked for more help which was given by other passengers. We managed to get plastic restraints on his wrists and ankles...

"He was by now shouting all the swear words imaginable. I kept my right arm on his wrist and there then followed some 90 minutes of threats and abuse. Women and children were moved to other parts of the aircraft and men moved in.

"My impression was that the man seemed to be both angry and terrified. Although he had drunk alcohol, there seemed to be some other factor driving him."

Captain Idris Hansen Bin Noh, the captain of the Airbus A330, which was full, said that as the plane was over Belgium he was informed by his cabin manager that a passenger was "out of control" .

As he wrestled with bad weather conditions nearing Heathrow, the cabin manager had to enter the flight deck six times because of the problem with Roberts.

One stewardess told Roberts to "chill out" but was told to go away because she was Australian, the court heard.

A passenger, who worked as a manager for Etihad, said: "He started to whisper into my wife’s ear asking her out to dinner.

"He was getting louder and louder. His behaviour was getting worse, the language was appalling. A gentleman managed to get him sat down but he got up again and got more abusive and refused to sit down. The crew tried to restrain him but he struggled violently. He then became very, very foulmouthed.

"He got out of the restraints and had to be restrained again. He was threatening to kill anyone that touched him."

Roseanne Montero, a galley attendant, said that she found Colonel Roberts sitting on a seat reserved for cabin crew. "He was swaying and fell on to the floor. I could see (his bad language) was scaring the other passengers near him.

"I saw him lean across and try to grab a female passenger near him, and I saw him trying to grab a woman with a small boy about 2 years old and the woman and the small boy looked terrified. This was accompanied by shouts of: ’F*** off, f*** off.’ His behaviour was appalling.

"I warned him if he did not behave he would be restrained and that the police would be called on landing. He then went mad and tried to get up.

"We got the plastic restraining strips and wrapped them round his wrists. We applied three pairs but he escaped after a few minutes and we had to get more and apply them to his wrists and feet."

Colonel Roberts, 51, of Passfield, Hants, allegedly told a male member of the cabin crew: "I’m going to kill you."

Another passenger described seeing Roberts hitting the man next to him with an open hand.

The plane landed at Heathrow at about 5.30pm and taxied to its gate where police officers came aboard. Pc Steven Jones described how as the doors opened Roberts threatened to fight them, shouting: "F****** come on, f****** come on."

The officer said: "There was a strong smell of alcohol, his speech was slurred and he was drunk. His hands and feet were tied together with plastic ties." Roberts struggled and when they arrived at Heathrow Police Station he refused to get out of the van and threw a punch at an officer, Pc Jones said. After he had been walked the 10-feet into the station he kicked the officer on his right leg, Pc Jones said.

"He was still struggling as we took the handcuffs off and we had to withdraw quickly. In an upstairs cell he began to kick out and had to be stopped from kicking out at myself and other officers."

The news focus will soon turn to the anti-depressant the diplomat was taking.

It's likely that the blame will fall on the drug and not the fact that the diplomat drank despite warnings from his doctor and the drug manufacturer that alcohol should not be consumed while taking Seroxat nor any SSRI anti-depressant.

Typically there is a two week period of time for an SSRI to be completely out of one's system. No alcohol should be consumed during that period of time.

Also it can take up to two weeks before an SSRI anti-depressant such as Seroxat (Paxil) becomes effective. It is extremely dangerous then to stop or re-start taking medication without recommendation from a prescribing medical doctor.

More on drinking alcohol while taking Seroxat (Paxil)

“…if you mix alcohol and Seroxat you are playing a very dangerous game indeed.”

I found your site on Sunday morning after having taken approximately 60 20mg Seroxat tablets whilst under the influence of alcohol the night before.

...I must have known that it would not kill me, but I am writing to post my opinion that if you mix alcohol and Seroxat you are playing a very dangerous game indeed..."

"...I was initially prescribed the drug around two years ago, stayed on it and was well for around nine months. I then stopped taking the drug with fairly disastrous effects and was put back on it in January of this year - this is where the problems have started.

In thirty years I have never ever had any compulsion to harm myself until January. However about a month after going back on it whenever I drank alcohol I was overcome with the most incredible urge to kill myself, I cut my wrists several times.

The drive to harm myself was very strong and when I had been drinking I would sit and plot how to kill myself, who would find me and so on.

I thought I was losing my mind, but again and again when I drank alcohol with Seroxat I became irrational, over-emotional, promiscuous, aggressive and rarely had any memory of what had gone on the night before.

It is a measure of how wonderful my friends and family are that they are all still with me after these six long months.

I was beaten up in a nightclub and another time rescued by the police whilst having a conversation in the street with a notorious pimp and crack dealer. I am aware with my 20-20 vision in hindsight that I should have stopped drinking whilst on this drug.

Saturday night was my graduation dinner, the culmination of five long years of studying. I had a fabulous evening with my friends. I have a loving and supportive family. I currently have no symptoms of depression. I have a fantastic job lined up and am so excited about my future.

Why would I then come home and take an overdose? Please be careful with this drug, and never EVER mix it with alcohol. I consider myself so lucky to have found this out before I lost my life, please don’t risk yours as well..."

Drug Awareness.org: Survivors

"If there's a wilder air rage incident I certainly haven't heard about it"

Ooooh, you had to throw down the gauntlet...

Battle for Life at 35,000 Feet
By Caroline Davies and Sean O'Neill
The Daily Telegraph - 30th December 2000

A BRITISH Airways jumbo jet, with 398 people on board, came within seconds of plummeting to earth yesterday after a deranged passenger burst into the cockpit and tried to seize the controls.
The airliner, flying from Gatwick to Nairobi, dived two miles from 35,000 feet as the crew fought with the man. They eventually overpowered the 27-year-old Kenyan with the help of passengers and tied him to a seat.
During the two-minute struggle the autopilot was disengaged, causing the Boeing 747-400 to spiral downwards. The cabin lights went out and screaming passengers were thrown against the walls and ceiling as the jet twice went into nosedives. The pilot, Capt William Hagan, 53, said afterwards over the tannoy: "A very nasty man has just tried to kill us all."
Among the terrified passengers were Jemima Khan, her children, mother and brother Benjamin Goldsmith, and the pop star Bryan Ferry and his family. A passenger threw himself at the controls of their British Airways jet.

As the Boeing 747-400 plunged two miles in a matter of seconds, Benjamin, son of the late Sir James Goldsmith, gripped the hand of his mother, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, and said: "We're going to die. We're going to die."
Nearby was his sister, Jemima Khan, 26, wife of the former cricketer Imran Khan. "She had her two little boys clinging round her neck and she was saying, 'Please, please, please, don't let us die. Please, please.'
"There were people hysterically crying, people being sick, shrieks coming from the back of the plane. Grown men were screaming, which was a horrific noise if you've never heard it before. I can't believe there was a single passenger on that plane who did not believe we were going to crash."
Bryan Ferry, former lead singer of the Seventies pop group Roxy Music, was seated in the upper section, next to the cockpit with his wife Lucy and three of his sons, Isaac, Tara and Merlin. Isaac, 15, had noticed the tall, muscular Kenyan man who walked from the economy section up into the business class cabin. His attention was caught by the man's peculiar behaviour.
He said later: "He was holding a prayer book. He seemed to be delirious, talking away to himself. He walked up the aisle towards the cockpit and was hanging around the toilets." But Mr Goldsmith and the rest of the passengers below were unaware that the 27-year-old man had entered the cockpit through an unlocked door.
He threw himself at the jet's controls, knocking out the autopilot, in a desperate suicide attempt. As the struggle between the man and the crew spilled out of the cockpit and into the upper club class section, the plane dived, then lurched, then dived again as the crew wrested back control of the craft and three passengers helped to restrain the man.
Mr Goldsmith said: "All we knew was that we woke to hear these shrieks. Everyone was screaming. The plane was in a nosedive, literally. We all thought it was curtains. They managed to pull the plane out of the dive, and it lurched back up again. The engines were making shrieking noises.
"Suddenly there was a violent stall and the whole plane was shuddering. Then it went into another dive. There was silence except for the emergency alarms and the seat belt signs going on and off, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong.
"It lurched to the left, and that was it. We knew we were really low down. We saw the ground coming up at us steeply, and everything was pouring down to the front of the plane - people, luggage, everything. One of the stewardesses smashed her ankle as she fell down really roughly to the front of the plane."
Mr Goldsmith said: "My sister was sitting there with her two little boys, absolutely terrified. My mother was sitting by my side. I said to her, 'We're going to die, we're going to die. Goodbye'. We really thought this was it. The lights went out. The oxygen masks had dropped. Then the plane gave another lurch, like a rollercoaster, a kind of weightless rolling forward.
"It was pretty touch and go. But we somehow got back into the upper position and we bumped back above the clouds and evened out. The pilot came on to the tannoy, totally out of breath, and said, 'A very nasty man has just tried to kill us all, but the plane is all right now'.
"Then the lights came back on. Everyone was hugging each other. It's all a bit of a haze now. It seemed so surreal at the time. I had mentally prepared myself that I was going to die. I have never been so terrified in all my life.
"The pilot came on later and said five or six seconds more and the plane would have tilted on to its back and blown up, so we were literally seconds from death. Bryan Ferry and his family were up on top, so they had a better idea of what was going on. Isaac managed to videotape some of it."...
Later, Mrs Khan said: "It was terrifying. The plane stalled, it went down 10,000ft and then it went down again. When it lurched up again, I thought, 'Oh God, don't prolong it'. I have always been afraid of flying and, I thought, this is it, my worst nightmare, this is the death I fear most."-- The Daily Telegraph - 30th December 2000

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