Yemeni man yelled "God is Greatest" on flight: prosecutor

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - A Yemeni man yelled "God is greatest" in Arabic as he tried to barge into the cockpit of an American Airlines flight over the weekend, a federal prosecutor told a judge in the case on Tuesday.

Rageh Al-Murisi, 28, has been charged with interfering with a flight crew for the incident on Sunday aboard American Airlines flight 1561, which was bound for San Francisco from Chicago with 162 people on board.

About 20 minutes before the plane landed, Al-Musiri allegedly tried to open the cockpit door, ramming his shoulder into it until a flight attendant and passengers subdued him, according to a criminal complaint issued on Monday.

Assistant U.S. attorney Elise Becker, in arguing that Al-Murisi was a threat to public safety, told U.S. Magistrate Judge James Larson that the defendant, who boarded the flight with no luggage, was heard to yell "Allahu Akbar," or "God is greatest" in Arabic during the incident.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/10/us-flight-yemeni-idUSTRE7497M920110510?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews

Eyewitnesses said people were screaming and crying.

There was a retired San Mateo cop, a retired Secret Service agent and an alert male flight attendant who took action.

Otherwise, I suppose Chickenshit America would have just cried its way through the whole idea.

Sonoman

SAN MATEO, Calif. — A retired San Mateo police officer who helped subdue Rageh Al-Murisi, the man charged with trying to break into the cockpit of a San Francisco-bound flight Sunday, said he was sure the suspect intended to crash the plane.

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/national/west/view/20110510retired_officer_describes_how_he_helped_subdue_man_who_rushed_cockpit/srvc=home&position=recent

Typically, if someone misbehaves on a plane, they're taking their lives into their hands because several large males will restrain them. IIRC, one poor man lost it on a flight into Denver shortly before 9/11. He wasn't a terrorist, he was just mentally ill. He ended up dead because the people restraining him didn't realize he couldn't breathe. I know there have been similar events since.

It doesn't matter if the person involved is drunk, mentally ill or a criminal; if someone is trying to open doors or damage the craft, they need to be stopped.

I think the only reason the hijackers on 9/11 succeeded is that they fell into the category of hijackers, and everyone else followed the script developed back when planes were hijacked to Cuba; sit quietly, take the plane where the hijacker wants to go, then we'll be on our way.

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the A/C power supply and cord from my laptop would fuck somebody up when used properly

keys always work

Got some screwdrivers as well. Plus laptop bag is always with me under seat or on lap when I fly for easy access.



People just need to be resourceful :P

We often seem to assume the good we will do given the chance, and assume why others wouldn't. I suppose that bit of self-validation is part of human condition.

That being said, my own experience leads me to believe that those who do the most say the least, those who say the most do the least... :shrug:

breaking up drunk fights and kicking assholes out of the building was a weekend pastime :P

Really? Are you really such a coward that you wouldn't have tried to subdue someone trying to get into the cockpit screaming in Arabic? Stop projecting your cowardice on the rest of us.

this asshole goes for a shitload of a long time.

I would have goaded my fellow passengers into killing him. He'll be back on a plane to Yemen before we know it, and he will escape real justice.

He's no better than the assholes who hijacked planes on 9/11.

Evil Islamo fascist on air planes screaming ALLAH AKBAR!

What was your point again?

Religious nuts pose a real threat to public safety.

I can only guess try to crash the plane, killing all on board and who knows how many on the ground.

Hope there's a nice spot in hell for that guy.

I don't care if he's shouting about god, allah, jesus or Cthulhu, a religious nut is a religious nut and once they start that shit on a plane, they need to be taken down hard and restrained. Then they should be shipped off to the asylum.

}(

Science creates planes, religion crashes them.

OTOH, IMO, one is study of the universe and other a study in human love/hate and fear.

indeed

then a real hijacking attempt. Unless if I'm mistaken, similar incidents have happened before.

A psychotic raised in another culture would be yelling something else. I think the key word is "psychotic".

I don't know about all that.

is charging for checked baggage now. If I were flying strictly domestic in the US, I probably wouldn't take any checked baggage with me any more if I had to pay $15, $20 or whatever they're charging for it these days.

Federal prosecuters say...why try to hide it?

It's a news report from reuters, not an opinion piece.

Why would any DUer want to hide fact, hide reality?

of fear and terror during Bush years. Also could be exaggerated to get us to be more accepting of TSA Groping and X-Raying us.

Many of us DU'ers are quite skeptical of stuff like this. I wouldn't recommend it myself, frankly. But, I did reply. So it got a kick. I read but didn't think it should be recommended because it would just give the PTB more ammunition to "terra alert us."

I guess I understand that same dynamic in those skeptical of stories of OBL's demise (or rise, or true boogeyman status, etc).

But unless we're just going to jettison reuters as a reliable source, and this story is being reported by other outlets as well, then we kinda have to accept this as an accurate report, it would seem to me.

I don't see how we can just pick and choose which reports to believe and which to doubt from what is considered a reliable news source simply because we like or don't like the content of the report. It's like saying Gallup is full of bs until they produce a poll we like, and then suddenly they are accurate. The story in the OP, by all accounts so far, is accurate.

Maybe I'm not seeing the full use of the rec/unrec feature. I assume an unrec is generally made because someone wants to hide or diminish the contents of a particular OP. And I also assume that DUers, above all, are interested in fact, and truth. Maybe I'm mistaken in one or both of those assumptions.

Some people may unrec because they dislike people pushing plane doors.

but, in general, what I've seen here on DU that those who Hit "Recommend" tell you about it.

It has always seemed a most unfair system since it was introduced here a couple years ago. It's bizarre. The original Democratic Underground wasn't like this. This is something different. I have no idea why they did it? :shrug:

The problem here is that he didn't have explosives, a weapon of other type, or co-conspirators.

These things, combined, suggest that this was not a real attempt at hi-jacking the airplane.

And, IMO, suspect.

sounds like a spoof

For example, one possible translation is "God is bigger."

I don't believe Arabic has a counterpart to our "great, greater, greatest." To get the superlative, you's have to add words yo yield something like "God is bigger (than everything else)."

I am not 100% sure of that, though.

other than yelling?

The cockpit door held. Maybe they'll put stronger partitions between first class and steerage, to keep the riff-raff from being tempted to use the first class toilet.

This is probably not the image the Marines try to project.

:hi:

Religion demands to be special, and I'm all for it.