Washington, June 18 (IANS) A man stood up from his seat during a flight to the US, and screamed about the CIA, security leaks and poison, but was subdued by fellow passengers, a media report said Tuesday.
The disruption occurred Monday during the United Airlines Flight 116 from Hong Kong that eventually landed safely at its scheduled destination in Newark, CNN reported.
Passengers onboard the Boeing 777 flight said the unidentified man began screaming around 10 hours into the flight.
“There was this gentleman screaming that he had names of people that work for the CIA and he was screaming those names – not making too much sense,” a passenger, Jacques Roizen, told CNN.
A group of passengers tackled him when the man reached for something in his pocket.
“He resisted and started saying things like ‘they’re trying to kill me, they’re trying to poison me’,” Roizen said.
Roizen said one of the first things the man mentioned was the “NSA leaker”, and that he wanted the flight diverted to Canada.
Edward Snowden, who has admitted to leaking National Security Agency documents about classified US surveillance programmes to journalists, has fled to Hong Kong.
Plane crew members provided plastic handcuffs to restrain the disruptive passenger, after which he calmed down, Roizen said.
Law enforcement officials later took the man to a hospital for evaluation, an FBI spokesman said.
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