American Airlines: The incident is the third scare of the weekend for U.S. air passengers and follows a number of security alerts at train stations and airports across America following the death of Bin Laden (file picture)
SOURCE: MERRY POPPETFrom the Daily Mail:
The Yemeni man who was wrestled to the floor after pounding on the cockpit door of a plane approaching San Francisco may have mistaken it for the bathroom.
Rageit Almurisi cannot speak English very well and could have misunderstood the signs inside the jet, his cousin claimed.
The maths teacher, who was heard yelling 'Allahu Akbar' as he allegedly battered the door, had also only been on three planes in his life and would have been unfamiliar with the layout.
Scary moment: The suspect was yelling unintelligibly as the American Airlines flight from Chicago was ten minutes out of San Francisco, police said.
His family also claimed that Almurisi, 28, suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and could also have reacted badly when an air stewardess told him to sit down.
His painful joint condition meant he had to take regular walks on flights, they claimed. ‘I would not be having that,’ his cousin Rageh Almoraissi said.
‘If a flight attendant has the nerve to grab me and try to force me to my seat, believe me, you would hear about other people having injuries.’
Almurisi sparked panic when he started yelling and banging on the cockpit door on American Airlines Flight 1561 from Chicago, just ten minutes before it was due to land on Sunday night, according to police.
But the suspect's cousin, Rageh, 29, said he was a university educated, easygoing person who had arrived in Northern California a year-and-a-half ago from Yemen in search of a better life.
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Whole article here.
