|
Threatens euro bank Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=518&e=3&u=/ap/20030106/ap_on_re_eu/germany_stolen_planehttp://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=518&e=3&u=/ap/20030106/ap_on_re_eu/germany_stolen_plane
Germans Urge Tighter Airport Security
1 hour, 29 minutes ago
By DAVID McHUGH, Associated Press Writer
FRANKFURT, Germany - Officials urged a security review for small airports Monday after a man stole a plane and threatened to crash it into Frankfurt's financial center, sowing fear of a terror attack.
Police said the man was a 31-year-old German who is apparently mentally disturbed. The man circled the city's skyscrapers Sunday for about two hours before landing safely at Frankfurt's international airport.
He said he wanted to draw attention to Judith Resnik, a U.S. astronaut killed in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. The pilot was persuaded to land after air traffic controllers arranged a phone conversation with the astronaut's brother, Charles S. Resnik, in Baltimore.
During his flight and attack threat, military jets shadowed him and authorities ordered thousands of people to leave Frankfurt's main rail station, two opera houses and several skyscrapers — the latter mostly empty on a Sunday afternoon at the end of the Christmas season.
The incident also forced the brief closure of runways at the Frankfurt airport, continental Europe's busiest.
German media identified the man as Franz-Stephan Strambach. He made a partial confession to investigators Monday, but his questioning was interrupted after several hours when his lawyer said Strambach was exhausted, said Job Tilmann, a spokesman for Frankfurt prosecutors.
A state court judge in Frankfurt ordered that he be transferred to a mental institution pending a decision by authorities on whether he is fit to be charged. "This was not a terrorist attack, but the act of an apparently disturbed person," Axel Raab, a spokesman for German air traffic control, said Monday.
In a rambling dialogue with air traffic controllers during the drama, officials said, the man threatened to crash into the European Central Bank headquarters unless he was allowed a TV interview as well as a call to Resnik's family.
"I want to make my great idol Judith Resnik famous with this," the pilot said in a call from the plane to news channel n-tv. "She deserves more attention, she was the first Jewish astronaut, and maybe that's why she isn't really considered."
Charles Resnik spoke to the pilot for several minutes in English, urging him to land the plane safely, said Bill Seiler, a spokesman for the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, where Resnik is director of musculoskeletal radiology.
The spokesman would not go into detail, saying "their conversation is private." Resnik is also a professor at the university's medical school.
In their conversation, Strambach apologized to Resnik for putting up a Web site commemorating his sister without asking permission, Raab said. Resnik reassured the pilot that the site was fine. Frankfurt air traffic controllers then persuaded Strambach to land, Raab said.
Strambach's name appears as the webmaster of an Internet site devoted to Judith Resnik, among seven astronauts killed when the Challenger exploded on Jan. 28, 1986, seconds after taking off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. German media reported that he lives with his mother in Darmstadt, about 25 miles south of Frankfurt.
He is believed to be the man who stole a plane from an airfield at Babenhausen, southeast of Frankfurt, threatening the plane's pilot with what turned out to be an unloaded gas pistol. The man then seized the controls and took off.
The incident raised jitters with its echoes of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Roland Koch, the governor of the state of Hesse where Frankfurt is located, said there would be a review of security at small airports like the one at Babenhausen.
Wilhelm Bender, head of Frankfurt airport, also said security needed to be tightened.
"Apparently it was possible for someone with a pistol simply to walk in with pistol and take an airplane," he was quoted by the Bild newspaper as saying. He added that it was "sad that a crazy person succeeded in paralyzing an entire city for hours."
In Berlin, Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Col. Hannes Wendroth said a panel set up after Sept. 11 to review how to respond to rogue aircraft has yet to reach conclusions.
Asked whether the military would have been allowed to shoot down the plane, Wendroth said, "You would need to take special care in deciding to do that over a built-up area."
"Once it emerged that this plane had nothing but the pilot and fuel on board, it could certainly be supposed that it would come down of its own accord," he added.
|
|
