“He might have mistaken the cockpit for the bathroom”
Suspect was yelling unintelligibly as an American Airline flight was ten minutes away from San Francisco.
“He might have seriously mistaken the cockpit for the bathroom”
A Yemeni native who screamed “God is great!” while rushing towards the cockpit of an inflight airplane might have just needed to use the head, says a family member.
Okay…
Seriously, folks, why not just say it like it is, like we see it all the time: Religion empowers an aspect of irrationality that can all too easily slip into insanity.
AP:
A federal judge has denied bail for a Yemen native accused of trying to barge into the cockpit of a San Francisco-bound American Airlines flight.
Prosecutors argued in court Tuesday that Rageh Al-Murisi shouldn’t get bail because he’s a danger to society.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Elise Becker says Al-Murisi yelled “God is great” in Arabic before pushing toward the cockpit. She notes the same phrase was uttered by the hijackers of Flight 93 as they took over the plane that eventually went down in Shanksville, Pa., on Sept. 11, 2001…
“I kept saying to myself: `What’s he doing? Does he have a bomb? Is he armed?’” passenger Angelina Marty said.
Another shocked passenger, Andrew Wai, thought, “Could this be it? Are we going down?”
Marty, 35, recalled Monday that she and other passengers on the plane were stunned when they saw Al-Murisi walking down the aisle. She said a woman in a row across from her who speaks Arabic interpreted that Al-Murisi said “God is Great!” in Arabic.
Wai, 27, also remembered on Monday that the wife of one of the men who took Al-Murisi down later said Al-Murisi was yelling the same: “Allahu Akbar.”
“There was no question in everybody’s mind that he was going to do something,” Marty said…
Almoraissi said he could not imagine what might have caused his cousin to act as authorities allege he did on the plane, but was certain Al-Murisi was not a terrorist. He said his cousin did not show an interest in politics and was not intensely religious.
“He might have seriously mistaken the cockpit for the bathroom,” Almoraissi said. “He’s only been on three planes in his whole life.” Al-Murisi was taking classes in California to learn English but was not happy with his progress, his cousin said.
