emergency landing on Sunday in Chittagong, Bangladesh, after a man
attempted to hijack the plane.
The suspect identified as Mahmud Polash Ahmed, a 24-year-old
Bangladeshi passenger from a village near the capital had been
previously arrested in a kidnapping case.
The flight, operated by state-run Biman Bangladesh Airlines, took off
from Dhaka at 4-35 p.m. for the trip to Dubai via Chittagong.
The pilot made the emergency landing in Chittagong about 40 minutes
later, after a crew member reported “suspicious behavior” by the man,
said Rezaul Karim, an official with the Bangladeshi military’s
inter-service public affairs office.
All 143 passengers and seven crew members aboard the Boeing 737-800
were safely evacuated, Air Vice Marshal Mofidur Rahman said at a news
conference broadcast live on Somoy TV.
The commandos fired at the suspect after he shot at them when they
asked him to surrender, army Maj. Gen. Motiur Rahman told reporters,
according to ATN TV news. He said that the suspect was carrying a
pistol, but did not say where the shooting took place.
The army official said the suspect asked to speak to his wife and to
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. before dying from injuries in an exchange
of gunfire with military commandos. He died before reaching the
hospital.
The suspect appeared to be “mentally imbalanced,” said Air Vice
Marshal M. Naim Hassan, chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority. “I am
saying this because of his behavior. He wanted to talk to the prime
minister.”
Before the suspect was pronounced dead, Rahman, had described him as a
“terrorist” and said that he had been arrested and was being
questioned.
Mufti Mahmud Khan, director of the law and media wing of Bangladesh’s
Rapid Action Battalion security agency, on Monday, said the suspect was
listed in its database and had been arrested in 2012. Khan declined to
provide details about the kidnapping case.
Officials said on Sunday that Ahmed was injured in an exchange of
gunfire with special forces, that he had shot at them first and was
armed with a pistol.
Civil aviation authorities cast doubt on that account on Monday.
When asked about reports that Ahmed had a toy gun, ministry secretary
Mohibul Haque said they didn’t know whether the pistol was a toy.
“We don’t know if there was any exchange of gunfire,” Haque said.
Bangladesh civil aviation minister Mahbub Ali told reporters that
Ahmed had booked a seat on the flight from Dhaka to Chittagong, and that
airport surveillance video showed him going through security with other
passengers.
“There was no signal that he had something” when he boarded Sunday’s flight, Ali said.
Khan said when the agency’s bomb-disposal unit reached the scene, they found that Ahmed had fake “bomb-like material.”
A police chief in Narayanganj outside Dhaka, Mohammed Moniruzzaman,
said Ahmed’s parents confirmed his identity, and that residents of the
village where he lived said he had a “bad reputation.”
A police official in Chittagong, Mohammed Alauddin, said by phone
that no one had yet claimed Ahmed’s body from the Chittagong Medical
College and Hospital mortuary.
