"Joking" Qatar Diplomat Caught Smoking on UA Flight Triggers Bomb Alert

Mohammed Yaaqob Y.M. Al-Madadi, a foreign diplomat with the Qatari Embassy in Washington D.C., got on an United Airlines 757 to Denver last night and, after having been caught smoking in the boys room, apparently thought it was funny to tell the air marshals that he was trying to light up his shoes instead. As reported by FOX this resulted in his arrest after jet fighters were scrambled to escort the plane to the Denver airport.

The Qatar ambassador is already whining.

Smoking Diplomat Causes Midair Bomb Scare
AP

A Qatari diplomat trying to sneak a smoke in an airplane bathroom sparked a bomb scare Wednesday night on a flight from Washington to Denver, officials said.

DENVER -- A Mideast diplomat who grabbed a surreptitious smoke in a jetliner's bathroom sparked a bomb scare and widespread alert that sent jet fighters scrambling to intercept the Denver-bound flight, officials said.

But no explosives were found and authorities speaking on condition of anonymity said they don't think he was trying to hurt anyone and he will not be criminally charged.

Qatar's U.S. ambassador, Ali Bin Fahad Al-Hajri, defended the envoy in a statement on his Washington embassy's Web site.

"This diplomat was traveling to Denver on official embassy business on my instructions, and he was certainly not engaged in any threatening activity. The facts will reveal that this was a mistake," the ambassador said, without identifying the envoy by name.

An Arab envoy briefed on the matter identified the diplomat as Mohammed Al-Madadi of Qatar, an oil-rich Middle East nation and close U.S. ally.

Wednesday's scare came three months after the attempted terror attack on Christmas Day when a Nigerian man tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner. Since then, law enforcement, flight crews and passengers have been on high alert for suspicious activity on airplanes. The scare exposed major holes in the country's national security and prompted immediate changes in terror-screening policies.

Two law enforcement officials said investigators were told the man was asked about the smell of smoke in the bathroom and he made a joke that he had been trying to light his shoes -- an apparent reference to the 2001 so-called "shoe bomber" Richard Reid.

The authorities asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.

Officials said air marshals aboard the flight restrained the man and he was questioned. The plane landed safely as military jets were scrambled.

The man was interviewed for several hours by investigators. But authorities delcined to provide any details about him and his status or whereabouts were unclear early Thursday.

The Boeing 757 was carrying 157 passengers and six crew members, United Airlines spokesman Michael Trevino said. It left Reagan National Airport at 5:19 p.m. EDT and landed at Denver International Airport at 7 p.m. MDT.

The flight crew radioed air traffic control to ask that the flight be met on the ground by law enforcement, Trevino said.

Passengers say they were kept on the plane for nearly an hour after it landed and then were questioned by officials. many were still trickling into the baggage area five hours after the plane landed.

Melissa Nitsch of Washington, D.C., said everyone aboard was questioned by the FBI before being released. Agents asked if they'd witnessed anything and for basic personal information.

"Everyone is pretty happy this situation is over," Nitsch said. "If you have to be stuck in a situation like this, it pretty much went perfectly."

The Transportation Security Administration confirmed that federal air marshals responded to a passenger "causing a disturbance onboard the aircraft," but didn't elaborate.

"Law enforcement and TSA responded to the scene and the passenger is currently being interviewed by law enforcement," TSA said late Wednesday in a statement. "All steps are being taken to ensure the safety of the traveling public."

Passenger Mei Turcotte, 26, of Kalispell, Montana, told The Associated Press she smelled smoke about an hour into the flight. She said she later looked out the window and saw two jets flying alongside the plane.

"I'm in the sky a lot, and I was thinking that might not be so normal," she said.

She was angry about having to stay at the airport to be questioned over something so minor.

"He went quietly. There was not a scene," Turcotte said. "They made this into something that was ridiculous."

Dave Klaversma, 55, of Parker, Colorado, said his wife, Laura, was sitting behind the man in the first-class section of the plane. She said she saw the man go into the bathroom and that moments later he said something to the flight crew. After that, two U.S. marshals in first class apprehended the man and sat next to him for the remainder of the flight.

Klaversma said his wife told him it all happened very quietly and that "there was no hysteria, no struggle, nothing." She said she noticed nothing unusual about the man before the incident.

Another passenger, 61-year-old Scott Smith of Laramie, Wyoming, said he was seated toward the middle of the plane and didn't notice any disturbance during the flight.

However, he said the approach into Denver was "unusual."

"We came in rather fast, and we were flying low for a long period of time," Smith, a computer programmer, told reporters by cell phone. "I've never seen a jetliner do that. There were no announcements, nothing about your carryon bags or tray tables."

Once on the ground, Smith said, the pilot eventually announced that "we have a situation here on the plane."

DIA spokesman Jeff Green said the airport remained open during the incident, and no flights were delayed or canceled.

Inside the terminal, passengers from other flights went through security and picked up their luggage at baggage carriers, apparently unaware of any emergency.

Erin Montroy, who was passing through the airport on her way from Kansas City to Las Vegas, said she hadn't heard anything about the incident and wasn't alarmed.

"I don't really ever feel as threatened as they think we should," she said.

President Barack Obama was briefed about the incident aboard Air Force One by National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones and National Security Chief of Staff Denis McDonough shortly before 9 p.m. EDT, said a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The president is traveling to Prague, where he'll sign a nuclear arms treaty with Russia Thursday.

A senior State Department official said the agency was aware of the tentative identification of the man as a Qatari diplomat and that there would be "consequences, diplomatic and otherwise" if he had committed a crime.

The latest edition of department's Diplomatic List, a registry of foreign diplomats working in the United States, identifies a man named Mohammed Yaaqob Y.M. Al-Madadi as the third secretary for the Qatari Embassy in Washington. Third secretary is a relatively low-ranking position at any diplomatic post and it was not immediately clear what his responsibilities would have been.

Foreign diplomats in the United States, like American diplomats posted abroad, have broad immunity from prosecution. The official said if the man's identity as a Qatari diplomat was confirmed and if it was found that he may have committed a crime, U.S. authorities would have to decide whether to ask Qatar to waive his diplomatic immunity so he could be charged and tried. Qatar could decline, the official said, and the man would likely be expelled from the United States.

An online biography on the business networking site LinkedIn shows that a Mohammed Al-Madadi has been in Washington since at least 2007, when he began studying at George Washington University's business school.

The job title listed on the site is database administrator at Qatar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Qatar, about the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined with a population of about 1.4 million people, is situation on the Arabian peninsula and surrounded by three sides by the Persian Gulf and to the south by Saudi Arabia.

The country hosts the forward headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, which runs the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and is major supporter of operations deemed critical to both campaigns. It also played a prime role in the 1991 Gulf War, which drove Saddam Hussein's Iraq out of Kuwait.

Airport Body Scanners Haram?

Citing the Koran and apparently seeking a religious exemption,

...[The Fiqh Council of North America and the Council on Islamic Relations]...say that body scanners are un-Islamic. Very well. There may be plenty of reasons to oppose body scanners, but when they put it this way, they suggest they'd be just fine with some sort of exemption from such scanning for Muslims. That would mean that the one group that would be subjected to lighter airport security checks than any other group would be...Muslims.

Read the rest HERE.

Talk about irony! It is Moslems that have made all these security measures necessary in the first place!

The big question: Will the West bow to yet another manifestation of Islamic supremacism?

Flight Diverted Jets Scrambled AGAIN

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to AirTran flight number 39, nonstop to San Francisco... hah. We should be so lucky. Your in-flight breakfast this morning will be scrambled F-16s fresh from NORAD thanks to the loudmouthed drunk holed up in the can, whose uncooperative behavior necessitates a brief emergency stopover in Colorado Springs in order that said drunk and all the rest of you can be questioned by the Fibbies... "

Deja vous all over again, and again without a name or description of the "unruly" passenger:

Fighter jets scrambled again because of unruly airline passenger
January 8, 2010 5:49 p.m. EST

(CNN) -- In the second such incident in three days, fighter jets escorted a diverted commercial flight on Friday after an unruly passenger caused alarm onboard.

The military sent up two F-16s in response to reports of an unruly passenger aboard AirTran Flight 39, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said in a statement.

The passenger had become belligerent and refused to leave the restroom, airline spokesman Tad Hutcheson told CNN Friday. The passenger appeared to be intoxicated, he said.

The flight, bound for San Francisco, California, left Atlanta, Georgia, at 9:48 a.m. ET, according to AirTran's Web site.

NORAD dispatched the fighters at 1:44 p.m. ET, escorting the aircraft to a safe emergency landing in Colorado Springs, Colorado, officials said. The passenger was detained there and FBI agents from Denver, Colorado, were called to question passengers, Hutcheson said.

The other passengers were scheduled to continue their trip at 4:30 p.m. ET, he said.

On Wednesday, NORAD escorted a Hawaii-bound plane back to its origination point of Portland, Oregon, when an unruly passenger in coach became "uncooperative," a Hawaiian Airlines official said.

Taking the "Isolated Incident" Scenario Way Too Far

They can protect us from Joan Rivers, but in the event of a real attack, looks like pilots in the skies are still on their own.


Pilot furious at U.S. for silence on bomb
By Steve Danyluk, Special to CNN
January 5, 2010 9:44 a.m. EST

Editor's note: Steve Danyluk is an international first officer for a major U.S. airline and president of The Independence Fund, a nonprofit that supports troops wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(CNN) -- Following the attempt to bomb a passenger jet on Christmas Day, President Obama said that "once the suspect attempted to take down Flight 253, it's clear Homeland Security and Aviation Security took all appropriate actions."

I am a commercial airline pilot who was deep over the Atlantic flying from St. Kitts and Nevis for nearly six hours on Christmas Day following the attempted bombing on Flight 253.

I only learned about the incident after landing when I looked at the CNN Web site on my iPhone. I'm justifiably furious that I was not notified while airborne.

Our government clearly dropped the ball. President Obama has ordered a review into the intelligence failures leading up to the attempted Christmas Day bombing by Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, but an equally important review needs to be made into how events were handled once AbdulMutallab attempted to carry out his plan.

Specifically, why weren't the actions the Transportation Safety Administration outlines in our aviation manuals initiated, and what took place inside the federal Domestic Events Network in the immediate aftermath of the terror attempt?

The Washington-based DEN Operations Center is supposed to allow federal agencies with jurisdiction over the security of U.S. airspace to communicate information in real time. So why, after eight years and billions of dollars, was the information concerning the incident available to me only on my iPhone?

Like many commercial pilots, I flew in the military. There, each squadron maintains something called a pre-mishap plan. Basically, it's a three-ring binder with a series of actions the watch officer is supposed to take when a mishap happens.

It's a very useful tool -- but only if the officer who is assigned to carry out the plan is familiar with the binder's contents. Good commanding officers run simulated mishap drills within their squadrons to ensure their junior officers effectively execute the plan.

I'm left with the sickening sense that after 9/11, the government spent horrific amounts of money to create the "mother of all" pre-mishap plans, but never effectively tested it. Why? Because unlike the military, where commanding officers rise up through the ranks based on professional competency, our government operates on a different model.

How else does one explain the failed governmental response to natural disasters like Katrina, or man-made disasters like the Christmas Day bombing attempt?

The silver lining is that AbdulMutallab's failed attempt gave us that test of the response system. It can only be attributed to luck that unlike 9/11, this was not a coordinated attack involving multiple aircraft.

Now that the gaping holes in our response have been exposed, let's do a thorough review of what took place on Flight 253 and ensure we have professionals in decision-making positions who will execute the plan if this happens again.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Steve Danyluk.