FBI investigates Airliner diversion

The FBI said Friday it was investigating a security scare that caused a Moroccan airliner traveling from New York to Casablanca to land overnight in Maine, but denied earlier reports that a passenger had made a bomb threat.
Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston, said the agency had interviewed the passenger after Royal Air Maroc Flight 201 landed on Thursday night in Bangor, Maine. The plane took off again at about 4 a.m. (0900 GMT) after law enforcement officials conducted security checks.
Marcinkiewicz said the passenger, identified as Zubair Ghias, had cooperated with the FBI and had not been arrested.
“There was no bomb threat made by him,” Marcinkiewicz said, adding that the FBI was continuing to investigate the matter.
Earlier, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration in Washington, Ann Davis, said “a passenger made a phone call to a family member and made a statement that included a bomb threat against the aircraft” but she had no further information about the alleged threat.
Police say Ghias disappeared in Chicago last weekend after picking up his wife at an airport on Valentine’s Day in a car brimming with flowers. His wife, who is six months pregnant, told them the investment banker said he was going to his office to do some work. She filed a missing person report with them.
His car was found later unlocked on a city street and money had been taken from his bank account. Police later said he was seen in New York City using his credit card to buy supplies at a hardware store.
News reports in Chicago said the plane was called back after Ghias telephoned his family in flight saying he was being kidnapped.
“He said ‘I have no choice. I’m being forced into doing this… I’m doing it to save my family’,” Ernie Rizzo, a private investigator hired by the Ghias family told WBBM Radio.
But a Chicago police detective who was with the family when the call came in told the Chicago Tribune that Ghias was not being kidnapped and had not been restrained by anyone on the plane.
The plane had 82 passengers and 10 crew members on board.