Earlier in the week, press coverage of Ayman al Zawahiri’s newest video performance focused on Zawahiri’s colorful descriptions of our President. Al Qaeda’s number two called President Bush an “alcoholic” who was addicted to drinking, lying and gambling — and other compulsive pursuits. But at the end of the 40:42 minute diatribe, called “Tremendous Lessons and Events in the Year 1427 AH,” there was an interesting, parting bid. Zawihiri instructed Muslims to serve jihad in Mauritania because, he said, the West African country’s leaders had recently recognized Israel.

From Reuters:

And so when, earlier today, an Air Mauritania passenger plane was hijacked shortly after it had taken off from the nation’s capital of Nouakchott, air traffic controllers around the world must have experienced a collective sense of dread. The hijacker was reported to be carrying two pistols and demanded that the flight be flown to Paris. Pilots convinced the man they did not have enough fuel.

When the plane landed on the tarmac at the military airport, Gando, in the Spanish Canary Islands, the pilots braked hard, sending the armed hijacker to the floor. According to multiple news sources, the hijacker fired two shots before being overtaken by passengers and crew.

Abass Bass, a representative of the Mauritanian Embassy in Washington, told CNN, “The information we had from Mauritania is that the passengers fought back and they took the hijacker and now everything is OK.” Bass also called the armed hijack a “tentative hijacking.”

A “tentative hijacking?” That is like calling someone “sort of pregnant” or “tentatively dead.”

Spanish government officials would neither confirm nor deny the reports of gunshots, nor would they release the hijacker’s name or his nationality.

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