Cached/copied 12-27-09
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http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/flight_253_passenger_says_at_l.html
Flight 253 passenger: Sharp-dressed man aided terror
suspect Umar
Farouk Abdul Mutallab onto plane without passport
(MLive.com exclusive)
December 26, 2009, 2:22PM
Kurt HaskellKurt Haskell's boarding pass
for NWA Flight 253
A Michigan man who was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253
says he witnessed Umar
Farouk
Abdul
Mutallab trying to board the plane in Amsterdam
without a passport.
Kurt Haskell of Newport, Mich., who
posted
an
earlier
comment
about his experience,
talked exclusively with MLive.com and confirmed he was on the flight by
sending a picture of his boarding pass. He and his wife, Lori, were
returning from a safari in Uganda when they boarded the NWA flight on
Friday.
Kurt HaskellLori and Kurt Haskell
Haskell said he and his wife were sitting on the ground near
their boarding gate in Amsterdam, which is when they saw Mutallab
approach the gate with an unidentified man.
Kurt and Lori Haskell are attorneys with Haskell Law Firm in Taylor.
Their expertise includes bankruptcy, family law and estate planning.
While
Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive
suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether
Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, 'He's from
Sudan and we do this all the time.'”
Mutallab
is Nigerian. Haskell believes the man may have been trying to garner
sympathy for Mutallab's lack of documents by portraying him as a
Sudanese refugee.
The ticket agent referred
Mutallab and his companion to her manager down the hall, and Haskell
didn't see Mutallab again until after he allegedly tried to detonate an
explosive on the plane.
Haskell said the
flight was mostly unremarkable. That was until he heard a flight
attendant say she smelled smoke, just after the pilot announced the
plane would land in Detroit in 10 minutes. Haskell got out of his seat
to view the brewing commotion.
“I stood up and walked a couple feet ahead to get a closer
look, and that's when I saw
the
flames,”
said Haskell, who sat about seven rows behind Mutallab. “It started to
spread pretty quickly. It went up the wall, all the way to ceiling.”
Haskell,
who described Mutallab as a diminutive man who looks like a teenager,
said about 30 seconds passed between the first mention of smoke and
when Mutallab was subdued by fellow passengers.
The ordeal has Haskell and his
wife a little shaken. Flight attendants were screaming during the fire
and the pilot sounded notably nervous when bringing the plane in for a
landing, he said.
“Immediately, the pilot came
on and said two words: emergency landing,” Haskell said. “And that was
it. The plane sped up instead of slowing down. You could tell he
floored it.”
As Mutallab was being led out of
the plane in handcuffs, Haskell said he realized that was the same man
he saw trying to board the plane in Amsterdam.
Passengers
had to wait about 20 minutes before they were allowed to exit the
plane. Haskell said he and other passengers waited about six hours to
be interviewed by the FBI.
About an hour
after landing, Haskell said he saw another man being taken into
custody. But a spokeswoman from the FBI in Detroit said Mutallab was
the only person taken into custody.
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