12 passengers arrested for acting strange on N.W. Flight

[Philosoraptor]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14477489/

TerrorTerrorTerror!

Flight diverted, fear continued.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Dutch police arrested 12 passengers who were allegedly behaving suspiciously on a U.S. airline flight to India that returned to Amsterdam shortly after takeoff Wednesday, an official said.

Police spokesman Rob Staenacker said he could not disclose the nationalities of the 12 people removed from the aircraft after it was diverted over German airspace. “I can tell you 12 people have been arrested,” he said. A passenger said she saw about a dozen people taken off the plane in handcuffs and they appeared to be of South Asian origin.

Northwest Flight NW0042 was escorted back by two F-16s after crew members reported several passengers were acting suspiciously, the Defense Ministry said earlier.

[HongKonger]

1. Link

Link?

Or are we just supposed to 'know'.

Ridiculous waste of a post if you can't provide details.

[xultar]

3. WTF you haven't heard about this. It's been all over the news.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[warrens]

36. Some of us work and have no cable

Or even a TV, for that matter.

[xultar]

39. But it is on the web. Top of all the news sites. You surely have access

to the www.

[Philosoraptor]

4. relax

[xultar]

7. No shit. Let Frankie Goes to Hollywood handle this one.

[Philosoraptor]

34. Really HK, this is a ridiculous waste of bandwidth

I had the link up two seconds after your scolding, now here you are two hours laters till pissed about it. ridiculous.

[xultar]

40. Apparently they need to get out into the sun more often.

[HongKonger]

51. What....

Us Chinks?

[HongKonger]

52. Well

I don't deal well with caustic retorts.

THanks.

[Tsiyu]

53. "Ridiculous waste of a post:" is NOT caustic?

Okey Dokey.

You mentioned in one post that you probably had "more reason to know about this information than anyone else on DU" as you were flying soon.

Researching things yourself - if you have a desperate need to know something - is never a bad thing. If you have time to post 10 replies in a thread you don't like, you have time to google any information you may need.

[Bluebear]

42. Take the WHOLE tablet. nt

[warrens]

2. Huh?

Got more?

[xultar]

5. This has been all over the news. You haven't heard about this?

[EstimatedProphet]

12. I haven't either

Maybe it's not all over the news everywhere. If it's on the news networks, I wouldn't hear about this unless Olbermann talks about it tonight, because I refuse to acknowledge any of them.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[EstimatedProphet]

17. I do now

I am at a library, for one, so I can't listen to the news anyway. Also I've been wrapped up in job searches and the like, so I've been distracted. This was the first time I've heard of it happenning.

[GeorgeGist]

19. Apparently the OP ...

didn't think so.

[uppityperson]

22. xultar, a tip for you. Some of us check DU for the news.

First time we read something, we do not know about it already so ask for a link. Have patience with others who are reading, hearing about something for the first time. If we ask for more, it probably means we haven't heard about it. Better use of time would be to give more info rather than pointing out we hadn't heard about it yet. Just a tip to take however.

[xultar]

41. Yeah but Links are only required in LBN. So why did they scold

the OP. I was taking up for the OP.

[uppityperson]

43. sorry, thanks.

got it. oops. thanks.

[Minstrel Boy]

6. We are winning the War against Strangeness n/t

[JeffR]

8. !!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Sugar Smack]

33. OMG!!!

:spray:

[babylonsister]

9. I recently heard MSNBC correct themselves and say the 'suspects'

were only being questioned, unless this is an update from the correction.:crazy:

[IChing]

11. PHOTOS HERE;

Wait you said a dozen right?
nevermind.

[myrna minx]

14. Uh oh--The War on Silly Walks.

:rofl:

[bahrbearian]

16. You are too funnyy,, Lol

[pnwmom]

25. In this case, if the reports are true, the arrests may have been prudent.

Supposedly the suspects were passing cell phones around during take-off, which is certainly odd behavior.

[lost-in-nj]

13. Oh dear god

Mass hysteria...
Don't they know that they wouldn't put 12 terra-ists on 1 plane!?
People take a deep breath and release.
Now look again, your on a flight to India for gods sake.... what did they expect???
that no Indians or people of middle eastern descent would fly on that plane??
I don't know what nationality the 12 were. I am just assuming here.
But i bet I'm right



I fear for common sense and reasonable sanity, they are going by the wayside :(






lost

[bahrbearian]

18. Boarding pass misshape

[pnwmom]

27. If you "fear for common sense and reasonable sanity,"

then perhaps you will feel better to know that the suspects were arrested for passing cell phones around during take-off. It wasn't really crazy for the flight crew to worry about that. . .was it?

[lost-in-nj]

29. You are right

It wasn't crazy to think something was going on, I can see how this would raise suspicion.
I guess I will have to see what will come of this.




lost

[pnwmom]

38. Hopefully it was nothing. But the flight crew

appears to have taken reasonable precautions, India has been a target of Muslim terrorists many times.

[Missy M]

20. Looks like Bush/Blair has the rest of the world in step with their...

terror, terror, terror. I guess all passengers will have to become Stepford people so they have no mannerisms, tics, quirks, nervous habits, etc.

[liberalmuse]

21. People acting strangely after being in Amsterdam?

If you still had some leftover hashish or shrooms you purchased from a smoke shop and had to go through customs at the airport, what would you do with your stash? Toss it? I think not.

[liam_laddie]

23. An aside about Schiphol Airport

In 1993, returning from Ireland, picking up a US-return flight in Amsterdam, I had a brick (literally)
of processed Irish peat; a comparison would be pressed charcoal briquettes vs. actual charcoal bits.
It's used like coal, to heat homes in parts of Ireland. I was bringing it back because it's like incense,
a wonderful aroma, kindling memories of green evenings in Connemara...and so forth.
Well, it looks just like a huge bar of hash. I showed it to the customs people; they knew what it was
and we had a chuckle. Then the Dutch woman did a perfect imitation of a southern belle accent
(it was a Delta flight through Atlanta...) expressing "she hoped ah had a swell tahm while y'all were heah."

[pnwmom]

26. Would hash or shrooms make you decide to pass cell phones around

during take-off?

If that report is true, then the arrests were probably justified, IMHOj.

[walldude]

44. LMAO.. I was going to post exactly the same thing

Great minds and all that. Of course the matching Floyd icons should have been a dead giveaway. :toast:

[pnwmom]

24. The suspects were passing around cell phones during take-off,

according to a U.S. source. That was the unusual behavior. So the pilot requested permission terminate the flight.

If that is true, it sounds prudent to me.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/08/23/international/i110646D75.DTL

SNIP

Police spokesman Rob Staenacker said he could not disclose their nationalities or the nature of the suspicions against them, only that "12 people have been arrested." An American passenger, who identified herself only as Alpa, told AP Television News she saw about a dozen people taken off the plane in handcuffs.

While Flight NO0042 was over German airspace shortly after takeoff, the pilot radioed for permission to return to Schiphol Airport and asked for an escort of jet fighters because some of the passengers were acting suspiciously, the Defense Ministry said.

"A number of them behaved, in the opinion of the crew, in a suspicious manner," said the ministry. "As a result, the captain asked to return to Schiphol."

A U.S. government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, said crew members and air marshals observed the passengers trying to use cell phones and passing them among themselves while the airliner was taking off."

SNIP

[rman]

49. Not prudent

Using cell phones during takeoff is either allowed or not. If not, why not just tell these passengers not to use the phones? What's next, abort the flight because someone goes to the toilet during takeoff?

This is just more paranoid scaremongering if you ask me. Following these kinds of security standards nobody should ever leave home, because there's a change you'll be run over by a car.

[Blue_Tires]

28. acting strange?

what the hell is that about?

and at what point do some of these passengers start suing for false arrest?

[Generator]

30. You know I get tired of the DU mind think

that everyone on the planet is innocent. They aren't. They aren't all or even very many of them terrorists, obviously either. BUT damn it people-flying is not a constitutional right given to us by by GOD or the powers that be. It's a privilege, I think. And if I (oh crazy white woman-they had some woman that was getting weird on some plane here in Portland and I though-heh that could have been ME because I tend to hate waiting around and get anxiety attacks) but I know that you can't shout BOMB or even make JOKES on an airplane. I don't expect to violate some rules-cell phones, walkmans whatever and think it's okay-I can do whatever I want. It's not my airline, my airspace, my RIGHT to fly. I HATE rules more than anybody-but rules are the price of flying-and yes-people have died because of terrorists on planes. It's not some fiction that everyone here wants to make it. I suppose we should err on the side of "freedom" and just accept that some people are going to die on airplanes. I guess that's a-okay with Du'ers. Because FREEDOM to do whatever you want must come before your life-and as I have learned on DU-everyone is Innocent and it's an OUTRAGE to ever SUSPECT anyone of being other than perfectly innocent.

[Blue_Tires]

31. it's hard to make a judgement either way

especially since "suspicious behavior" and "acting strange" are all the 12 are accused of doing, with no further detail...I know that everyone (including myself) act strange in their own way sometimes, so in want of more detail (i.e., standing up and yelling "HIJACK"), i tend to give people the benefit of the doubt....

I also know that this is at least the fourth such incident I've read about on DU the past two weeks about some flight being diverted or passengers kicked off, and to my knowlegde, nobody has yet to be charged with any real CRIMES yet--so i'm seeing a trend here...

[lost-in-nj]

32. You wrote

how I feel.. I was trying to word it with out sounding nasty because it wasn't supposed to be.


Thanks for reading my mind :hi:


lost

[Karenina]

54. ALL TWELVE RELEASED

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2473419

[Philosoraptor]

55. they sucked 3 days worth of t.v. terror out of those guys, it was worth it

[treestar]

37. I don't see a problem with the presumption of innocence

And the terra thing is overexaggerated - the administration will be using the incident to try to gain more power, the media for more melodrama and scare tactics. It's natural to be skeptical now about terra alerts.

I cannot figure out why people would be passing cell phones around but they could be on a group trip and just programming each others' numbers into every phone for convenience of being able to reach everyone in the group. There could be harmless reasons.

It's weirder to key into the idea that any unusual behavior means something sinister, IMO. Or at least, I would say that mindset is a lot more bothersome.

[walldude]

45. Yeah, shame on DU'ers for presumption of innocence.

And shame on us for thinking that the Government and TSA are a bunch of fucking retards that couldn't catch a real terrorist if he were a 7 foot Arab on a dialysis machine. I fly all the time. 4 or 5 times a month. Nothing the government has done since 9/11 has made me feel any safer getting on a plane. Statistically speaking the odds of you getting killed by a terrorist attack are about the same as you getting hit by lightning. Probably less. Sorry if it offends you that I am not afraid of another terrorist attack. You want to live in fear, looking over your shoulder for terrorists who hate your freedoms, while the government is busy taking those freedoms away with your gratitude? Be my guest, you are free to do so, for now...

[Ms. Clio]

46. great post

apparently the presumption of innocence is soooo 20th century.

:thumbsup:

[rman]

48. Ridiculous premise

Where did you get the idea that DU-ers think "everyone on the planet is innocent"?

It's just that many think that "acting strange" is not evidence of guilt.

[treestar]

35. It's the Jon Benet Ramsay jury

They are making plans to go into hiding.

:silly:

[Buns_of_Fire]

47. What happens when ALL the passengers are terrorists?

Cruising altitude reached. "Fasten Seatbelt" sign turned off. All 180 people on board stand up simultaneously and scream "I am taking command of this plane in the name of rijregijzg!" (That last part is unintelligible because everyone's shouting the name of their individual organization/diety, from "God" to "Allah" to "Hezbollah" to "Mel Brooks"...)

Silence. Embarrassed looks. Mumbled back-and-forths: "Who the hell are you?" "Who the hell are YOU?" "Who the hell are BOTH of you?"

Everyone sheepishly sits back down, unaware what to do next. The flight lands without further incident.

(I'm sorry. It's been a long day...)

[Blue_Tires]

50. well!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1972875#1973223