Fresh Hooey - Hijacker Not Terrorist

Last Thursday, a flight carrying 79 total passengers and crew took off from Mauritania bound for Spain's Grand Canary Island. In air, a 32-year-old Muslim, Mohamed Abderraman, brandished two firearms and ordered the pilot, Ahmedou Mohamed Lemine, to fly to France.

Along the way, speaking to the hijacker, the pilot realized the man did not speak French. So he used the plane's public address system to warn the passengers in French of the ploy he was going to try: brake hard upon landing, then speed up abruptly. The idea was to catch the hijacker off balance, and have crew members and men sitting in the front rows of the plane jump him, the Spanish official said.

The pilot also warned women and children to move to the back of the plane in preparation for the subterfuge, the official said.

It worked. The man was standing in the middle aisle when the pilot carried out his maneuver, and he fell to the floor, dropping one of his two 7 mm pistols. Flight attendants then threw boiling water from a coffee machine in his face and at his chest, and some 10 people jumped on the man and beat him, the Spanish official said.

The hijacking alarmed Spanish officials because a trial of 29 people accused in the Madrid terrorist bombings of 2004 had begun the same day in Madrid. (NYT)

Inexplicably, Mauritanian police official Mohamed Ould Mohamed Cheikh stated that Abderraman wasn't a terrorist. He was merely hijacking the plane to seek political asylum.

I would disagree. Seventy-nine people were terrorized by Abderraman and that alone makes him a terrorist, despite his motives. Remember, terrorism is a tactic. Whether he hijacked the plane for ideological, political, medical or personal reasons makes no difference. And, to be successful in battling terrorism, people need to stop denying its existence.

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