Fri, May 13, 2005
Four People Detained In Bangor
No one was really sure, but federal officials decided it was
better to be safe than sorry, so they diverted an Air France flight
from Paris to Boston Thursday afternoon. The aircraft with its 169
passengers made an unscheduled stop in Bangor, ME, where they spent
less than two hours before continuing on to Boston.
When the Airbus A330-200 landed in Bangor, it was boarded by
federal officials who took a man, woman, child and baby off for
questioning. Authorities at the US Department of Homeland Security
said they realized as the flight was crossing the Atlantic that one
passenger's name was spelled only slightly different than the name
of a man on the no-fly list. A DHS source told the Washington Post
that the passenger's birthday was an exact match. That's when they
decided to divert the flight, the source said.
Only after the flight was diverted and the four passengers
questioned did DHS officials decide the passenger wasn't the man
they thought he was.
"After a thorough interview and review of the facts on the
ground by Customs and Border Protection, the individual in question
was deemed admissible to the United States," agency spokeswoman
Christiana Halsey told the Post.
"They were sitting next to me, they were very normal people,
there was nothing fishy about them," passenger Sabiha Bishara told
Maine Today. "When the customs agents boarded, the wife was very
surprised."
Passengers were notified of the diversion about halfway across
the Atlantic, said passenger Bill Silveira of Lakeville, MA. When
he asked a flight attendant what was going on, he was told someone
was on the plane who shouldn't have been.
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