The Associated Press has reported that a Boeing 777 flight has made an unscheduled landing in Stockholm owing to a tip off that one of the passengers was in possession of explosives. It has been announced that the suspect is an ethnic Pakistani Canadian citizen. Bomb technicians and police are heading to the plane, but as yet there is no intention of closing the airport. Kansas City News reports that the 273 passengers are now being evacuated. Astonishingly, the BBC coverage of this story does not even mention the fact that the suspect is a Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin (this was the case as of 09:22 UK time; the BBC may relent and add this detail later). This is typical of the BBC’s unwillingness to link acts of terrorism or suspected terrorism to Islam, Muslims or even Islamism.
If the suspect turns out to be an Islamist suicide bomber, the question has to be asked: why hasn’t he detonated himself? Did he have a change of heart or a failure of nerve? Did his device fail? Is this man another ‘underpants’ bomber? Is this just a false alarm?
Details at present are scant, but the manner in which the tip off was delivered was unusual: according to CNN it was given by a woman who called Canadian police from a payphone in Canada who then relayed the information to the crew of the plane whilst it was in Swedish airspace. The report quotes Stockholm Police spokesman Kjell Lindgren as saying: "They landed here because they said that someone onboard was carrying something that wasn't allowed, some explosive or something. We don't know exactly what it is yet."
The video report below is taken from Sky News:
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