SRI LANKAN IN AIRLINE ‘BOMB’ DRAMA

Armed officers from an elite police unit boarded the flight and overpowered the man

Just released from psychiatric care:

Entered cockpit threatening to “blow up plane”:

Overpowered by terrified passengers :

A Sri Lankan man who tried to enter an airline cockpit with what he said was a bomb, before terrified passengers managed to overpower him, had just been released from psychiatric care when he boarded the plane, Australian police said Thursday. Those on board the Malaysian Airlines flight from Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur said they feared for their lives when the 25-year-old rushed towards the cockpit shouting that he wanted to “blow the plane up”.

“He had been released from psychiatric care (on Wednesday), and from there we believe he has purchased a ticket on this plane... and then got out to the airport and on that plane,” Victoria state police chief Graham Ashton told reporters.

Several passengers wrestled him to the floor and tied him up before the plane made an emergency landing at Melbourne airport. Armed officers from an elite police unit boarded the flight,handcuffing the man and escorting him off the plane. Photographs on national media showed black-clad officers carrying rifles in the cabin. The suspect, who lived in the Melbourne suburb of Dandenong and was studying to be a chef, said he was carrying a bomb but the device was actually a bluetooth speaker slightly larger than an iPhone, Ashton said.

He added that the incident was no longer being treated as possibly linked to terrorism, but instead a “case involving a mental health issue”.

The unnamed man is now being questioned by investigators. He faces charges of making threats and false claims, and of endangering an aircraft’s safety -- offences that carry a 10-year sentence. Malaysian Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi earlier told AFP the incident was “not a hijack” but involved “one disruptive passenger (who) tried to enter the plane’s cockpit”.

While officials played down the incident, passengers spoke of a terrifying 90-minute ordeal after the plane took off.

A business class passenger, former Australian Rules football player Andrew Leoncelli, told Melbourne radio station 3AW that the arrested man threatened to blow the plane up.

“The staff were saying ‘Sit back down sir, sit back down sir’. He goes ‘No, I’m not going to sit back down, I’m going to blow the plane up’,” he told 3AW.

“The staff screamed out ‘I need some help, I need some help’. So I jumped up, undid my buckle, and approached him.” Leoncelli said the would-be bomber ran to the back of the plane, where two other men grabbed him, removed the apparent device, and “put hog ties on him”. Passenger Arif Chaudery said he joined several others to subdue the man.

“Families, kids, they were very scared, and some screaming... so three or four guys, we jumped as quickly as possible,” he told Channel Nine television. - AFP

 

 

 

 

 

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