Posted on 12/26/2009 11:55:38 AM PST by American Dream 246
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, and believes at least one other person from the flight was arrested on Friday at Detroit Metro Airport.
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.
Kurt HaskellLori and Kurt HaskellHaskell 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.
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 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 bomb-sniffing dogs detected something in a fellow passenger's bag at Detroit Metro Airport. He says the FBI told passengers to move to another area of the airport following the incident. “They said, 'It's not a safe area. Read into that what you want.' I interpreted it to mean that there's a bomb in his carry-on.”
Though Haskell says he saw that man led away in handcuffs, he has yet to see anything discussed publicly about a second arrest – even though he believes it may somehow be connected to Mutallab's foiled terror attack. “I know what I saw.”
A call to the FBI on Saturday afternoon has not yet been returned.
.......
Put this together with today's unfolding incident, also nigerians, also flight 253 (thus confusion re: details in reporting), soon after other incident so more likely to be taken as (oh, excuse us!) overreacting, as is already being said.
Note fine tuning, changing methods to incorporate new rule that psgrs have to stay in seats for one hour before landing >> now passenger gets unruly because he needs to go to br (as some apologists are explaining it already).
These are all terror incidents. Include flights 227 and 297 in it as well, probing, probing, looking to see how psgrs and crew -- and media and authorities -- react.
In other words they pull for extra screening those they think will go along with the least resistance.
Caucasian Grandmas.
It has become almost a joke with me when I go to the airport. I will usually tell the person behind me that I will be pulled out and my bags will be gone through. About 8 out of 10 times I am right. Short, chunky, white middle-aged woman. The TSA people are nice enough, but it is ridiculous. And, it isn’t always at Milwaukee! I’ve flown out of Milwaukee, Seattle, Dallas, Amarillo, Atlanta, Charlotte, Savannah, Burlington,VT, San Francisco and Chicago. The only one I have not been tagged at was in Amarillo. lol I forgot about my nail clippers being in my purse once. Had those puppies confiscated, but not my fountain pen. Go figure.
Our stupid government is more concerned about PC and not hurting a terrorist’s feelings than it is about keeping innocent people safe.
How much more disgusting can this get?
Thanks for posting this. Have you seen any updates?
When they say he had a visa, does that mean he had an actual passport with a visa stamped in it, or is reference being made to the State Dept. records that indicate a visa was issued?
20 min?, He was lucky. I was on a Peoples Express 747-200 that had a Bomb Threat called on it, we sat on the runway at O’hare for 2 hours.
We already had one guy already on a plane caught who didn’t look like the stereotype. Richard Reid.
This doesn't jive with another passenger's account as reported on the WTMG Radio's website:
"...They got us off faster than anything you've ever seen, and then they shuffled us off to a room where we spent quite a few hours..."
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