Officials Probing Incidents in Airplane’s Diversion

Federal officials Friday were trying to sort out the chain of events that triggered the diversion of a Morocco-bound jetliner, an incident that apparently began when a passenger called home from the plane.

FBI spokesman Ross Rice said there was no terrorist threat against the Royal Air Maroc flight, which took off from New York on Thursday evening and landed in Bangor four hours later, shortly after 11 p.m.

But Yolanda Clark, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, said her agency learned at about 10:30 p.m. that night that “a male passenger phoned his wife from the plane and stated he was going to blow it up.”

The Boeing 767 resumed its flight Friday and landed safely in Casablanca. Two men were detained in Maine to be questioned by federal authorities.

The man whose phone call apparently triggered the diversion, identified as Zubair Ali Ghias, was charged Friday with making false statements to the FBI.

The complaint alleged that Ghias falsely told the FBI that he had been kidnapped by a group of Arabs in Chicago and forced to buy a ticket to Morocco.

In a subsequent interview with the FBI, Ghias admitted that he concocted the abduction story, FBI Agent Wayne Hedrick said in a court affidavit.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official identified the second man who was detained as Ahmed Bhiksi, a Moroccan who was in the process of being deported from the United States. Spokeswoman Paula Grenier would not say why Bhiksi was being deported.

He left the plane with the other passengers while Bangor police searched for a bomb.

Bhiksi was detained because he balked at getting back on the airplane, Grenier said.