Posted on 09/12/2002 7:50:16 AM PDT by 3AngelaD
Three arrested after plane diverted to Arkansas
By JENNY MARBERRY
FORT SMITH, Ark. (AP) _ A federal prosecutor says charges would likely be filed Thursday against three men who allegedly were disruptive on a Northwest Airlines plane diverted to Fort Smith as the nation marked the anniversary of last year's terrorist attacks.
The three were taken Wednesday to the Sebastian County Detention Center after Flight 979 landed safely at the Fort Smith airport.
U.S. Attorney Tom Gean said he will charge the three with interfering with a flight crew. The crime is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
A Sebastian County jailer identified the men as Gurdeep Wander, 48, and Harinder Singh, 41, both of India, and Alaaeldin Abdelsalam, 37, of Egypt.
The plane, an Airbus A320 traveling from Memphis, Tenn., to Las Vegas with 94 passengers and a crew of five, resumed its trip later Wednesday and arrived safely in Las Vegas about 5 p.m. Pacific time.
``I was scared, very scared,'' Sherry Tizzano, a passenger from Nashville, Tenn., said after getting off the plane at Las Vegas ``We were all scared.''
Passenger Jim Humphrey, 45, of Winchester, Ky., was asked by a flight attendant to help with the men. The 6-foot, 260-pound Humphrey said they didn't act in a threatening way _ ``just irregular activity.''
Federal officials speaking on condition of anonymity said the incident was not believed to be related to terrorism.
Investigators were worried that one of the men had taken a bomb aboard the plane. Officials blew open a cardboard box that belonged to one of the men. Nothing extraordinary was found.
Originally, the flight crew also was suspicious of a fourth man. But Gean said the man was released due to lack of evidence.
At Las Vegas, Carlos Nieves said flight attendants singled him out because he is dark skinned, thinking he was Arab. Nieves' father is Puerto Rican and his mother is Costa Rican, he said. Nieves, 35, of Las Vegas, said he didn't know the three men who were arrested. He said the FBI questioned him about whether he knew the other suspects and whether he's a Muslim. He's Catholic, he said. They also asked him whether he'd ever had any militia training.
Nieves, who left New York on Wednesday morning after surgery, said he slept through most of the flight and got up once to go to the bathroom and throw up.
Gean said, ``The suspicious activity began prior to the flight ever leaving Memphis'' and continued on the plane. The pilot decided to land at Fort Smith after the men refused to obey the flight crew's orders.
``Unable to satisfactorily resolve the situation in-flight, the crew elected to divert to Fort Smith as a precaution,'' the airline said in a statement.
Two of the men had shaved on the flight, raising concerns, Gean said.
After last year's terror attacks, documents taken from the luggage of terrorist leader Mohamed Atta gave what appeared to be instructions for the suicide hijackers: ``The previous night, shave the extra hair from the body (and) pray.''
Tuesday, the Bush administration had raised the nation's terror alert warning to its second-highest level _ code orange _ signaling a ``high risk'' of attack with the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks at hand.
The airline said Wednesday the men had boarded at Minneapolis and made a connection to Flight 979 at Memphis. Both are Northwest Airlines hubs.
The jet took off from Memphis at 8:47 a.m. Central time and was initially scheduled to arrive at Las Vegas at 10:19 a.m. Pacific time.
At Fort Smith, police initially got passengers off the plane, along with all the luggage and packages. John Miller of the Arkansas State Police bomb squad said a bomb-sniffing dog alerted on the cardboard box that was later destroyed.
Also, a dog alerted on a laptop. The owner of the laptop said he had used the computer during the weekend after working with fertilizer. The laptop was returned to the man, Miller said. The Fort Smith airport was closed for a while. No other air traffic in the area was affected, said Dave Steigman, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Agency.
eeeewwwwwwww....I wouldn't want that laptop back....
Sounds like he was spending some time over at DU.
This is a very good sign.
heartening to FINALLY have some explicit attempts at racial/ethnic physical profiling.
Norm Mineta must be having fits. "The old white women! You're supposed to stop and search the old white women!"
1) Seems the idea that more than 1 was in the bathroom at any one time, that they'd "locked" themselves in there, that they had to be "negotiated" out is wholly and completely bogus.
2) Only 1 of the men is ACTUALLY "Middle Eastern" or "Arab." And religion is highly unclear. If they are their real names it's highly unlikely either of the two Indians are Muslims.
3) THERE IS NO EVIDENCE ANYONE SHAVED THEIR BODY HAIR. Actually, the number of "shavers" seems down to ONE in a more recent AP story; one was seen with shaving cream on his face and his shirt off when the bathroom door was open.
"But 45-year-old passenger Jim Humphrey of Winchester, Kentucky, said the four passengers who alarmed the flight crew didn't act in a threatening way. He said they just engaged in irregular activity. The six-foot, 260-pound Humphrey said he was asked by a flight attendant to help with the men.
Humphrey said suspicions were raised when the men boarded moments before the gate closed. He said they carried identical small bags similar to shaving kits.
He said that, after one of the men went to the lavatory, a noise could be heard inside the bathroom that couldn't be identified. He said that, when a flight attendant knocked on the door and asked the man inside what he was doing, the door opened to reveal the man with his shirt off and shaving cream on his face.
Humphrey said that, later, this man got into conversation in a foreign language with another of the four men regarded as suspicious. Humphrey said the big concern was the unknown. He credited the pilots and flight crew with making the best call that they could in deciding to land at Fort Smith."
4) NO weapons seem to have been found on ANYONE.
5) So far it seems that one is guilty of removing his shirt (I personally never shave with a shirt on since shaving cream will fall on the shirt) to shave, and talking in a foreign language. Sounds like execution-material to me.
Just rub the dog's face in it...
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