Man Admits Making Threats on Plane

A Palestinian man who lived in Orange County for two decades will be sentenced to up to six years behind bars after pleading guilty to making threats aboard an aircraft while in the custody of INS agents taking him to a detention facility in New York.

Mohammad Mahmoud Bachir, 43, admitted in federal court Friday that he resisted boarding the flight at Los Angeles International Airport in February and threatened to try to make the plane crash.

Bachir had been in custody off and on since losing his status as a legal resident after he was convicted in 1995 of parental abduction for taking his son to Lebanon during a dispute with his American-born wife, Assistant U.S. Atty. John Owens said.

An immigration judge then ordered Bachir deported to Lebanon, where he was born to Palestinian parents in a refugee camp, but that country refused to take him because he is not Lebanese. “He is a stateless person,” Owens said.

Bachir, who has worked as an accountant and operated a video store in Anaheim, remained in INS custody for more than three years before being released last year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that nondeportable detainees cannot be jailed indefinitely.

He was then picked up again by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in January for violating conditions of his release, authorities said.

A month later, the agency attempted to transfer him to a detention facility in Buffalo, N.Y.

Shackled at the hands and feet, Bachir kicked and struggled with four INS agents as they led him onto the Northwest Airlines aircraft, authorities said.

Bachir screamed that he was a terrorist and would blow the plane up, prosecutors said. In his plea agreement, Bachir admitted that he yelled words to the effect, “I will crash this plane if I have the chance. I don’t care if this airplane goes down.”

Bachir’s outbursts alarmed crew members, who asked the agents to remove him from the flight.

Bachir is set to be sentenced Sept. 30 by U.S. District Judge Lourdes Baird in Los Angeles for resisting an officer and for his statements threatening the flight.