Feb 18, 2007
FOILED, ALL BECAUSE...Hijacker didn't know French
Pilot used the language to tell passengers to prepare for fightback
SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, CANARY ISLANDS (SPAIN) - PASSENGERS on a hijacked jet described their terror before their pilot used the gunman's inability to understand French to hatch a plot to save them.
'We were afraid. We thought it was people from Al-Qaeda or the Algerian GSPC who were going to cut our throats,' said passenger Aicha Mint Sidi, 45. The GSPC is a Muslim extremist group.
The ordeal began when a man armed with two 7mm pistols burst into the cockpit shortly after the Air Mauritania Boeing 737, carrying 71 passengers and a crew of eight, took off from the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott on Thursday
The plane was heading for Gran Canaria in Spain's Canary Islands, but the hijacker wanted to fly to France so he could request political asylum, said Mauritania's top police official Mohamed Ould Mohamed Cheikh.
After the crew told the gunman there was not enough fuel to reach France, veteran pilot Captain Ahmedou Mohamed Lemine resumed his course for his original destination.
When he realised the hijacker did not understand French, he decided to use that as a weapon against him to organise a fightback by passengers.
Using the plane's public address system, he told the passengers in French what he was going to attempt: First, he would slam on the brakes upon landing, then accelerate abruptly in the hope of throwing the hijacker off balance.
He also asked crew members and men sitting in the front rows of the plane to jump on the man, a Spanish official said, while warning women and children to take refuge in the back rows.
It was a desperate plan but it worked to perfection.
As the plane touched down on Gran Canaria, the hijacker - identified by the Spanish official as 32-year-old Mauritanian Mohamed Abderraman - was standing in the middle aisle.
The deliberately rough landing threw him to the floor, where he dropped one of his pistols.
Flight attendants then threw boiling water on the man's face and chest, and about 10 people jumped and beat him into submission, the Spanish official said.
Around 20 people were slightly injured when the plane braked suddenly, the Spanish official said, and the hijacker was arrested by Spanish police.
Air Mauritania spokesman Ahmedou Ahmedou said of Captain Ahmedou Mohamed: 'The man deserves a medal.'
AP
there were conflicting reports as to whether passengers or crew subdued the hijackers.
Another valuable lesson for terrorists to get better in future.
Thanks to our right to information.
If those were terrorists, the whole crew would be dead by now. This time, it is just a bunch of desperate assylum seekers.
