Arrests made in the San Francisco jetliner hijack threat case

August 20th, 2010 - 7:38 pm ICT by Aishwarya Bhatt  

Jetliner San Francisco, Aug 20 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Detectives are looking for an anonymous caller who called and threatened a jetliner bound to take off. The airplane wasn’t allowed to leave the airport after the threat. Two of the plane’s passengers were also detained for further questioning.

Police officers say an unknown caller called a firm in Alameda, which is a city near the San Francisco Bay saying that the American Airlines plane bound for New York was under threat. The recipient of the call immediately alerted police authorities just around 9 am.

The American Airlines flight 24 which was already late was immediately diverted to land at the San Francisco airport, just a few minutes after going up in the air.

The plane, which was carrying 163 passengers and 11 crewmembers, was grounded for a couple of hours before two passengers were handcuffed and taken off the plane. They were later allowed back on the plane before it took off to New York’s Kennedy airport.

The two arrested people were believed to have been identified as suspects as a result of their ethnicity. “It definitely seems like it was racial profiling, based on what they look like physically and the fact they are Pakistani. It seems like this was a false accusation,” according to Anderson, who was a passenger on the flight.

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