A 45-year-old man has been charged with threatening to blow up a Malaysia Airlines flight that was forced to turn back to Australia on Monday.
Canberra resident Muhammad Arif was arrested almost three hours after the Kuala Lumpur-bound flight returned to Sydney Airport.
Police said Mr Arif had become disruptive and claimed to have explosives on board.
He was charged with making a false statement about a threat to damage an aircraft and failing to comply with cabin crew’s safety instructions.
The charges carry a potential maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of more than 15,000 Australian dollars (US$7,300) respectively.
Mr Arif’s defence lawyer Mostafa Daoudie said his client had mental health issues and was “not in the right state of mind”.
Flight MH122 had 199 passengers and 12 crew on board when it left Sydney early on Monday afternoon for an eight-hour flight to Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysia Airlines said the pilot decided to return to Sydney for safety reasons.
New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb defended the delay of almost three hours between when the plane landed and when two police officers handcuffed Mr Arif.
“We can never presume anything and we you don’t know whether this person was acting alone or he actually had other support on the plane or outside the plane,” Ms Webb said.
In total, 32 domestic flights were cancelled and other domestic flights delayed by up to 90 minutes due to the incident, Sydney Airport said. There were no international flight cancellations.
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Company profile
Name: Dukkantek
Started: January 2021
Founders: Sanad Yaghi, Ali Al Sayegh and Shadi Joulani
Based: UAE
Number of employees: 140
Sector: B2B Vertical SaaS(software as a service)
Investment: $5.2 million
Funding stage: Seed round
Investors: Global Founders Capital, Colle Capital Partners, Wamda Capital, Plug and Play, Comma Capital, Nowais Capital, Annex Investments and AMK Investment Office
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Packages which the US Secret Service said contained possible explosive devices were sent to:
- Former first lady Hillary Clinton
- Former US president Barack Obama
- Philanthropist and businessman George Soros
- Former CIA director John Brennan at CNN's New York bureau
- Former Attorney General Eric Holder (delivered to former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz)
- California Congresswoman Maxine Waters (two devices)
