Wednesday
26 Sep 2007
Panama Arrests 6 Syrians Who Tried to Enter Cockpit
By Annie Jacobsen in category Dry Runs and Probes
On Tuesday, police at Panama City's Tocumen International Airport arrested six Syrian men traveling on Copa Airlines Flight 231 after other passengers feared "the suspects were going to storm the cockpit armed with cutlery," and told crew about it. (Go, Juan and Juanita Doe!)
According to Panama's National Police director, Rolando Mirones, the Syrians approached the cockpit "apparently with the intention of opening a door." Police Director Jose Ayu Prado issued a statement this morning stating that the Syrians had indeed "approached the cockpit door and tried to open it."
The Syrians say they approached the cockpit by mistake and that they were looking for the bathroom.
Also at issue on the Cuba-to-Panama flight was a missing knife. Reporter Juan Zamorano has more from Police Chief Mirones in a story for the Associated Press:
Copa Airlines crew simply notified authorities on the ground that a knife was missing after they served the meal in the first-class cabin, where the Syrians were sitting. He did not say whether the Syrians were suspected of taking the knife.
Mirones said the suspects "did not commit any violent acts inside the airplane, but they raised suspicions," adding: "That is why we are investigating."
The Syrians, ages 17 to 30, were on their way to Haiti and Jamaica via Panama.
The cockpit-door-mistaken-for-the-bathroom ruse has been used in other aviation security probes before, including one by a Saudi student traveling on a Southwest Airlines flight — before 9/11. This incident is listed in The 9/11 Commission Report as a dry run (the student was deported after 9/11). A similar ruse was more recently used in by three Egyptian nationals trying to get into the cockpit during a Prague-to-Oslo flight. Instead of looking for the bathroom, these Egyptians claimed they were looking "to buy some chewing gum." Czech Intelligence Agency, BIS, wrote in its 2006 annual report that three “Egyptians [were] suspected of [taking part] in the preparation of a terrorist attack on a civilian aircraft.”
Further reading: Dry Runs and Probes, Czech Republic's Official Report on Terrorist Dry Run, DHS Report on Northwest Flight 327.