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January 1, 2010

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Plane hero: It was like a movie

THE Dutch traveler who has been hailed as a hero for stopping a suspected bomber on a United States-bound flight says the whole thing felt like a movie script - his own.

Jasper Schuringa, a video producer who leapt onto the Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, says he wrote a script eight years ago about a failed suicide attack on Amsterdam's airport, the same place from which the Christmas Day flight took off.

"It is about a suicide bomber who wants to murder a politician at Schiphol. But at the crucial moment the bomb doesn't go off," Schuringa said in an interview in Miami published yesterday in the Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad.

Schuringa jumped on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after the 23-year-old student allegedly tried to detonate explosives he had concealed in his underwear as Northwest Airlines Flight 253, with 289 passengers and crew, was descending toward Detroit.

Schuringa said he reacted instinctively when he saw Abdulmutallab in his seat with flames rising around him.

Helped by other passengers, he patted down the flames with his bare hands and then dragged Abdulmutallab to the front of the aircraft and ripped off his clothes to remove the small package filled with the explosive pentrite.

"How did I know what I should do? I don't know, I just did," he said. "Maybe I've watched too many American movies."




 

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