Que the music.
Posted on 12/27/2009 7:19:25 AM PST by Kieri
A Michigan man who was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 says he witnessed Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab trying to board the plane in Amsterdam without a passport.
Kurt Haskell of Newport, Mich., who posted an earlier comment about his experience, talked exclusively with MLive.com and confirmed he was on the flight by sending a picture of his boarding pass. He and his wife, Lori, were returning from a safari in Uganda when they boarded the NWA flight on Friday.
Haskell said he and his wife were sitting on the ground near their boarding gate in Amsterdam, which is when they saw Mutallab approach the gate with an unidentified man.
Kurt and Lori Haskell are attorneys with Haskell Law Firm in Taylor. Their expertise includes bankruptcy, family law and estate planning.
While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, 'He's from Sudan and we do this all the time.'”
Mutallab is Nigerian. Haskell believes the man may have been trying to garner sympathy for Mutallab's lack of documents by portraying him as a Sudanese refugee.
The ticket agent referred Mutallab and his companion to her manager down the hall, and Haskell didn't see Mutallab again until after he allegedly tried to detonate an explosive on the plane.
Haskell said the flight was mostly unremarkable. That was until he heard a flight attendant say she smelled smoke, just after the pilot announced the plane would land in Detroit in 10 minutes. Haskell got out of his seat to view the brewing commotion.
“I stood up and walked a couple feet ahead to get a closer look, and that's when I saw the flames,” said Haskell, who sat about seven rows behind Mutallab. “It started to spread pretty quickly. It went up the wall, all the way to ceiling.”
Haskell, who described Mutallab as a diminutive man who looks like a teenager, said about 30 seconds passed between the first mention of smoke and when Mutallab was subdued by fellow passengers.
“He didn't fight back at all. This wasn't a big skirmish,” Haskell said. “A couple guys jumped on him and hauled him away.”
The ordeal has Haskell and his wife a little shaken. Flight attendants were screaming during the fire and the pilot sounded notably nervous when bringing the plane in for a landing, he said.
“Immediately, the pilot came on and said two words: emergency landing,” Haskell said. “And that was it. The plane sped up instead of slowing down. You could tell he floored it.”
As Mutallab was being led out of the plane in handcuffs, Haskell said he realized that was the same man he saw trying to board the plane in Amsterdam.
Passengers had to wait about 20 minutes before they were allowed to exit the plane. Haskell said he and other passengers waited about six hours to be interviewed by the FBI.
About an hour after landing, Haskell said he saw another man being taken into custody. But a spokeswoman from the FBI in Detroit said Mutallab was the only person taken into custody.
I read this on FR yesterday and yet not one MSM outlet has reported this.
I wonder why not?
Que the music.
Probably a representative from the Saudi embassy.
Wouldn't be helpful to god.
And arrest those guys right now!
Could this be the camera guy other witnesses have spoken about? You know, that accomplice the msm is denying exists.
Why wait 20 minutes to evacuate? Who knows what else could have been on that aircraft?
No doubt Mr. Haskell will be hauled in front of Homeland Security to be “re-educated.” Janet Napolitano said the system “worked,” so therefore he MUST be wrong. /sarc
I am just not buying this story......yet!
I believe the man characterized the “helper” as Indian. That is the reason it caught my eye as my sweetie is Indian (Catholic).
Let me look in my History to see if I can find his first posting.
Until this gets reported elsewhere, I am suspicious this is a person pimping for a reality tv show.
Probably Hussein's latest czar. But yeah, same thing.
Who is “pimpig for a reality show, the Haskell guy or this alleged sharp dressed man?
How offensive to American Icon’s ZZ Topp, for you to lend any kind of relationship to barbarians!
here ya go:
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/commenter_says_he_was_aboard_n.html
“An Indian man in a nicely dressed suit around age 50 approached the check in counter with the terrorist and said “This man needs to get on this flight and he has no passport.” The two of them were an odd pair as the terrorist is a short, black man that looked like he was very poor and looks around age 17(Although I think he is 23 he doesn’t look it). It did not cross my mind that they were terrorists, only that the two looked weird together. The ticket taker said “you can’t board without a passport”. The Indian man then replied, “He is from Sudan, we do this all the time”. I can only take from this to mean that it is difficult to get passports from Sudan and this was some sort of sympathy ploy. The ticket taker then said “You will have to talk to my manager”, and sent the two down a hallway. I never saw the Indian man again as he wasn’t on the flight. It was also weird that the terrorist never said a word in this exchange. Anyway, somehow, the terrorist still made it onto the plane. I am not sure if it was a bribe or just sympathy from the security manager.
FBI also arrested a different Indian man while we were held in customs after a bomb sniffing dog detected a bomb in his carry on bag and he was searched after we landed. This was later confirmed while we were in customs when an FBI agent said to us “You are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. Read between the lines. Some of you saw what just happened.”(The arrest of the other Indian man). I am not sure why this hasn’t made it into any news story, but I stood about 15-20 feet away from the other Indian man when he was cuffed and arrested after his search.”
On a 4K a day vaca....
yeah....
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/commenter_says_he_was_aboard_n.html
that’s prolly where I got it!
In fact, Atlas Shrugs picked it up, too!
My guess is they had to prepare a secure area to interview all the passengers. The incident happened just before landing so they didn’t have any time to get ready. There were almost 300 people on the plane.
I hope the passengers were well screened to see if the bomber had any accomplices.
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