Attempted Terrorist Plot Foiled

[Guest Sundancefisher]

A guy tried to blow up a plane inbound to the US from Amsterdam. Bomb appeared to have misfired. Passengers subdued the man. The terrorist suffered 3rd degree burns to his crotch when the bomb missfired.

 

Lucky Christmas present for a plane load of people.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8430612.stm

 

 

[Tungsten]

 

 

I say anybody who was born in Afghanistan should not be allowed to fly on commercial airlines.They can get there own dam planes.

 

[headscan]

Except that there's no evidence he was born in Afghanistan and the news stories say he's Nigerian. Going down a very dangerous road suggesting something like that - Richard Reid (the shoe bomber) was British...

[Tungsten]

Ya i no its crazy.Just sick of hearing about shite like this.

You would think that security would be up at this time of year and it wouldn't be possible to board a plane with something strapped to your leg.

I really hope they get some info from this guy and arrest anybody else that may have been involved.

 

Tungsten

thinks any person who is involved with terrorism should have there nuts cut off.

 

[bigbowtrout]

"Amsterdam on a KLM flight from Lagos, Nigeria, and is not believed to be on any "no fly" list, although his name does appear in a U.S. database of people with suspect connections".

[headscan]

You would think that security would be up at this time of year and it wouldn't be possible to board a plane with something strapped to your leg.

Security at the airports is only slightly effective at protecting against what has been done before. That's why we have to take off our shoes and throw away our water bottles. Since this guy had the explosives strapped to his leg maybe now we'll have to take off our pants or submit to a full pat down every time. I'm a 25,000+ mile a year air traveller so I'm not looking forward to the "added security measures".

 

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009...d_security.html

[Tungsten]

Clue me in, I don't travel unless i can take my boat.Do you not go threw some sort of scanner like your bags before you can enter a plane?

[headscan]

Your check-in luggage gets x-rayed, maybe a dog sniffs it for drugs and/or explosives (more likely drugs), and physically searched at random. Your carry-on luggage - including jacket, hat, shoes, whatever - go through an x-ray machine. You go through a metal detector. At random they'll pull someone out of the line and hand search their luggage as well as pat them down and go over them with the metal detector wand. The only way they'd detect something non-metallic strapped to your leg is by patting you down. Doing that for every passenger that goes through Calgary or Pearson would be ridiculous let alone a really busy airport like Atlanta, Heathrow, LAX, or Frankfurt.

 

There was a story a while back about a test the TSA did. They sent someone through security screening with a bomb in their backpack. Made it through no problem. So they went back to the checkpoint and told them they were testing the effectiveness and that there was a bomb in the backpack. Even knowing that the screener was unable to find the bomb with the x-ray machine.

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Montreal woman aboard Detroit-bound Flight 253 tells of foiled terror attack

at 18:50 on December 26, 2009, EDT.

By Jessica Murphy, THE CANADIAN PRESS

Shama Chopra, 54, photographed at home in Montreal on Saturday, December 26, 2009. As Chopra boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam, she noticed a man lagging behind, hands on his forehead, lost in thought. She didn't know the nervous man would be involved in the attempted terrorist attack on the Christmas Day flight to Detroit. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Peter McCabe

Shama Chopra, 54, photographed at home in Montreal on Saturday, December 26, 2009. As Chopra boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam, she noticed a man lagging behind, hands on his forehead, lost in thought. She didn't know the nervous man would be involved in the attempted terrorist attack on the Christmas Day flight to Detroit. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Peter McCabe

 

MONTREAL - As Montrealer Shama Chopra boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, she noticed a man lagging behind, hands on his forehead, lost in thought. He was one of the last to enter the plane.

 

He moved past her seat in business class into the second aisle in economy.

 

She didn't know the nervous man would be involved in an attempted terrorist attack on the Christmas Day flight.

 

It began as an uneventful journey. As everyone was readying for landing - passengers doing up their seatbelts, flight attendants making their way to their fold-out seats - the commotion started.

 

"I heard fireworks, I thought it was gunshots," Chopra told The Canadian Press on Saturday from her home in suburban Montreal.

 

"The flight attendants started screaming loudly: 'Fire, fire! Water, water!"'

 

Others appealed for calm, begging passengers to remain in their seats. Chopra turned and saw the man - now identified as 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - in flames.

 

"Then one guy behind him jumped from his chair, sat on him and, with his hands, tried to put out the flames," she said.

 

But he was unable to douse the fire. Passengers began passing water bottles back to help put out the blaze.

 

"I thought: 'We're gone now. That's it.' So I sat in my chair. What can you do but give your water bottles? So that's what everyone did. To put the flames down."

 

Amid the chaos, women and children were being moved to the front of the plane, she said.

 

"The smoke was so bad," Chopra said. "I started coughing. The children were screaming. The air hostesses were so panicked, they were almost half crying. They were saying: 'Please sit down, please, everyone stay in your chairs'."

 

Four people - passengers and crew - managed to wrestle the suspect down and he was brought to the front of the plane, Chopra said.

 

His legs and stomach were burned but he was still resisting. His captors managed to find rope, tie him up and cover him in a blanket.

 

"They said: 'Don't move, don't move'," she recalled. "They pushed him in a chair and they tied him up."

 

By that time, the plane was just minutes from landing.

 

Once on the ground, Chopra said, authorities boarded the flight, guns drawn, and led Mutallab of the plane.

 

Passengers were kept on the plane for another 30 minutes before being led into the airport and held there for five more hours. There were security agents everywhere and passengers were not even allowed to go to the bathroom without being escorted, Chopra said.

 

She watched the pilots as they got off the plane. She said they looked ashen and shaken.

 

Chopra, who had been visiting family in India, had felt ill boarding the flight in Amsterdam. Now, safely off the plane, she began vomiting. She was given a wheelchair and was allowed to stay close to the washroom.

 

Hours later, she was boarded a Montreal-bound flight home.

 

Chopra said she flies frequently and wouldn't hesitate to get on a plane again. But she would be wary about boarding another American flight.

 

"One crazy guy can do anything," she said. "You can't go into everyone's mind."

 

Still, recalling how tight security seemed at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, she doesn't understand how Mutallab managed to get on the plane in the first place.

 

"I don't know how this guy entered, what more they need to do?" she asked.

 

Now home, Chopra gets scared when she thinks back to the incident.

 

"Somehow this device didn't explode," she said. "If it had exploded, we would be all gone. Finished. Two-hundred and-seventy-eight people, plus the crew."

 

 

[headscan]

By the way, the new "security" measures are that you can't leave your seat during the last hour of the flight for any reason including using the washroom. For the last hour you can't have anything in your lap either like a blanket, laptop, magazine, book, etc. Am I the only one who sees the huge gaping hole in this logic?

[headscan]

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/bound+Ca...2638/story.html

 

Full outline of the new security measures, including physical searches of every passenger and all their carry-on luggage (now limited to one item per person). Scroll down to the bottom of the story for some frighteningly racist and xenophobic comments from semi-literate Herald readers.

[Pipestoneflyguy]

I think the most offensive aspect of this entire story was the full screen shot of his dirty underwear I had to look at when I turned on my TV at 6:30 this morning....

[Taco]

Betcha he was singin' whilst he was searing his balls...........................

[dutchie]

he should be just taken out back and shot in the head , no need to waste time on a trial , but them bleeding hearts will cry foul , and say he can be saved , this world we live in is being overrun by thugs and gangs and i really feel sorry for we sold out our country and so has the u.s

 

we have men and women over in afgan fighting for them and us and the rights to have freedoms and speach , some coming home in body bags and everytime i turn around or hear the news it just makes me sick to my stomach ,

 

if they did stuff like try to blow up a plane in there own country they would be standing in front of a firing squad , i say we need some tough love in this country , deal with them like china would ,

[rehsifylf]

WTF - Arrive three hours before your flight? I head to Phoenix new Year's Day - FLIGHT LEAVES AT 7AM I should just walk!

 

Do people realize that there is no way, repeat, no way that you will ever be able to prevent someone from bringing down an airplane if they really want to? The security measures are a placebo to make people feel safer, but clearly there are about 50 new methods that just haven't been tried yet.

 

In the end - take 1.7 Billion travellers each year and delay them by an extra hour - thats 194,063 years of life you just %$^$%ed with. Assume the average person lives 75 years - thats 2600 lifetimes each year since 2001. They don't have to actually blow up the plane to succeed.

 

Still - this bumped the BS about turning over terrorists to the Afghan authorities off the front page, didn't it?

[headscan]

he should be just taken out back and shot in the head , no need to waste time on a trial , but them bleeding hearts will cry foul , and say he can be saved , this world we live in is being overrun by thugs and gangs and i really feel sorry for we sold out our country and so has the u.s

I don't think anyone has said he could be "saved". I don't recall anyone saying that about Richard Reid either and he's rotting in jail for the rest of his life after being tried.

 

we have men and women over in afgan fighting for them and us and the rights to have freedoms and speach , some coming home in body bags and everytime i turn around or hear the news it just makes me sick to my stomach ,

I think you'll find that the men and women we have in Afghanistan are fighting against a group (the Taliban) that used to regularly take people to a soccer stadium and publicly execute them without wasting time on a trial.

 

if they did stuff like try to blow up a plane in there own country they would be standing in front of a firing squad , i say we need some tough love in this country , deal with them like china would ,

So you're saying that we should have a legal system more like China? Because that would be real progress. Oddly, you seem to want us to become more like those we fight against.

 

[reevesr1]

Gotta agree with Marc on this. We (speaking as an American here) are in Afghanistan because the terrorist group who attacked us in 2001 used to run Afghanistan. Regardless of whether someone agrees with that or not, what can't be denied is how they ran Afghanistan. No tolerance for anything that went against their "principles", and I use that term loosely. Agree with them, or run the risk of dying. The LAST thing we need in this country is to be more like them. Killing your captured enemy is not "tough love." I hope with all of my bleeding heart that neither of the countries I call home ever condones such a thing.

 

Now do I think that someone who tries to blow up an airplane who is apparently a member of a terrorist organization that is basically at war with the west should get the same treatment as an American citizen? No, I do not. I think he is a prisoner of war, and the Geneva Convention applies. If he is tried and convicted and sentenced to death, I certainly would not shed a tear. But we follow due process now that he has been captured.

 

And before anybody tells me what the men and women in the military are fighting for, I gotta remind them that I was one of those men (though we never fought anyone while I was in.) I can promise that I never fought for a country that would have just off a captured prisoner.

[Taco]

well said you two

[Weedy1]

I'm quite amazed this fellow and Richard Reid were allowed to live after being detained on board. I would have expected them to be killed on board in order to minimize any further threat to security. I guess maybe airline staff are trained otherwise.

It would be interesting to know the guidelines set forth.

[headscan]

[reevesr1]

Unfortunately, it does not make one iota of difference what the odds of being on a plane with a terrorist are. As I've said many, many times in various threads, human beings are terrible risk assessors. Many reasons, but there are two big ones. We don't really understand the difference between 1 in 1000, 1 in 1,000,000 or one in 1,000,000,000,000....... We may understand it intellectually, but not emotionally. And the big one is emotion. Being killed in an airplane, or by a bomb is a terrible way to go. So we place so much emotional emphasis on the method of passing we disregard (or ignore-not sure what the right term here is) the remoteness of the risk.

 

All that said, politically there is absolutely no chance on this planet that any western government would not institute these measures if it was their country being targeted. You think we are terrible assessors of risk? Throw CYA into it!

[dutchie]

headscan

first , that is not a war , war is what happens when a country declares it on another , these are not soldiers , they are terrorists , trying to push the life they want on the rest of the world , no care for women or children if they get killed ,

 

i think if you was on that plane or the ones that flew into the towers , and you knew you were going to die , you'd want them killed ,

 

after the great War 11, those found guilty for crimes against the people were shot or hung , i see no diff on this , you will never change the way they think of us , and rotting in jail , not likely , maybe sitting in jail with 3 meals a day and enjoying tv ,

 

all i'm saying is if that plane would of blew up and everyone killed on it and it landed on a school , and we had the chance or knew he was going to do it , then what is the diff of killing him befor or after , even if his plan didn't work , i'm sorry if my opinion is not the same as some , the only way to stop it is kill them all , every last living terrorist , again i say terrorist , they will never stop as they think by getting killed themselves they going to see the great one ,

 

and after seeing today a few more of my brothers in arms getting killed over in afgan , i feel for the loved ones they left behind , i myself served over 20 years and it deeply saddens me when i see my fellow brothers in arms and a couple friends who i used to work with not come back home all because of some terrorist ,

 

you can not give a inch or feel sorry for these crazy terrorists , i'm sure you might think diff if it was you in the towers and looked out and seen that plane coming at you , or if it was your wife or kids on one of them planes , maybe next time it just might be in canada , or someone you know is lost , i hope not , yet i see it only takes a few years for the world to start to let the guard down , they will strike again , it's a fact , big question is when and where , so to me the only way to ever stop it is to rid the world of them all , make this world a peace full loving place that we all get along ,

[headscan]

Unfortunately, it does not make one iota of difference what the odds of being on a plane with a terrorist are. As I've said many, many times in various threads, human beings are terrible risk assessors. Many reasons, but there are two big ones. We don't really understand the difference between 1 in 1000, 1 in 1,000,000 or one in 1,000,000,000,000....... We may understand it intellectually, but not emotionally. And the big one is emotion. Being killed in an airplane, or by a bomb is a terrible way to go. So we place so much emotional emphasis on the method of passing we disregard (or ignore-not sure what the right term here is) the remoteness of the risk.

 

All that said, politically there is absolutely no chance on this planet that any western government would not institute these measures if it was their country being targeted. You think we are terrible assessors of risk? Throw CYA into it!

Yeah, the politics and emotion behind it is huge. I'd bet the odds of being killed by a drunk driver are higher, but we don't see the government spending the same kind of money on extra checkstops or putting breathalyzers in every car. I saw that graphic and just thought it was interesting. I don't even know that the math is correct.

[headscan]

headscan

first , that is not a war , war is what happens when a country declares it on another , these are not soldiers , they are terrorists , trying to push the life they want on the rest of the world , no care for women or children if they get killed ,

 

i think if you was on that plane or the ones that flew into the towers , and you knew you were going to die , you'd want them killed ,

 

after the great War 11, those found guilty for crimes against the people were shot or hung , i see no diff on this , you will never change the way they think of us , and rotting in jail , not likely , maybe sitting in jail with 3 meals a day and enjoying tv ,

 

all i'm saying is if that plane would of blew up and everyone killed on it and it landed on a school , and we had the chance or knew he was going to do it , then what is the diff of killing him befor or after , even if his plan didn't work , i'm sorry if my opinion is not the same as some , the only way to stop it is kill them all , every last living terrorist , again i say terrorist , they will never stop as they think by getting killed themselves they going to see the great one ,

 

and after seeing today a few more of my brothers in arms getting killed over in afgan , i feel for the loved ones they left behind , i myself served over 20 years and it deeply saddens me when i see my fellow brothers in arms and a couple friends who i used to work with not come back home all because of some terrorist ,

 

you can not give a inch or feel sorry for these crazy terrorists , i'm sure you might think diff if it was you in the towers and looked out and seen that plane coming at you , or if it was your wife or kids on one of them planes , maybe next time it just might be in canada , or someone you know is lost , i hope not , yet i see it only takes a few years for the world to start to let the guard down , they will strike again , it's a fact , big question is when and where , so to me the only way to ever stop it is to rid the world of them all , make this world a peace full loving place that we all get along ,

I started typing out a long reply, but it's just not worth it. You don't get it and I doubt you ever will. My original replies to you still stand.

[dutchie]

headscan

but it's just not worth it. You don't get it and I doubt you ever will.

 

wrong , i do get it and more then you'll ever know , and i really doubt you will ever understand till it's you that is looking out a window of a plane while it's being over run by terrorists , then the light bulb will come on , i hope it never happens to you , yet if i does i'm sure you will remember back to your reply's ,

 

just a thought for you to ponder during the day

 

of the terrorists that they have let go from cuba to go back into the world as good free people , FACT , at least 5 are known to have join back up with the terrorists cells and want nothing more then to kill the innocent again , makes no diff to them if it's woman or children , so why on gods earth should we even take a small chance on them , bringing them roses and asking them to be nice terrorist boys , just don't work