Passengers' terror suspicions delay plane, cause panic

A Moscow-bound airliner was delayed for three hours today because passengers suspected that three Chechen terrorists were on board.

The Cyprus Airways plane departed only after the three men were transferred to another flight, said spokesman Tasos Angeli.

“The trouble started when a Russian woman told airline staff in the airport departure lounge shortly before take-off that she suspected a fellow traveller, who was slightly dark-skinned with a closely cropped beard, was a terrorist,” Angeli said.

“The woman was persuaded to board the plane,” he said. ”But once aboard she and other Russian passengers insisted on searching the hand luggage of the bearded man and two other men, who were also slightly dark-skinned. This created an uproar on the plane and the pilot decided to ask everyone to disembark for further security checks.”

The plane took off after a three-hour delay, but without the three men, who were transferred to another flight. Angeli said a similar incident happened at Larnaca airport last week involving a Russian Aeroflot plane.

Security for Russia-bound flights has increased at Larnaca following last month’s explosions aboard two Russian planes, which crashed nearly simultaneously and killed all 90 people on board.

Those crashes were the first in a series of recent attacks claimed by Chechen rebels that have killed more than 400 people in Russia. In the other attacks, a suicide bomber killed 10 people in a Moscow subway station. And two weeks ago armed men took hostages in a school in southern Russia which resulted in the killing of more than 350 people, many of them children.