Passengers:  
Rigoberto Alpizar Didn't Say 'Bomb' 

Forbes / AP 9dec2005

 

The airline passenger shot to death by federal marshals who said he made a bomb threat was agitated even before boarding and later appeared to be desperate to get off the plane, some fellow travelers said.

Rigoberto Alpizar and some family members

Mindfully.org note: 

It seems that one is significantly safer and more secure the further one is from an agent of the US government. Anyone who has flown lately knows that overcrowding and gruff handing by all involved are at all time highs.

We strongly suggest that when thinking of traveling, that you consider: A) not going; or B) alternative modes of travel that. Without even considering that an air marshal can kill people and get away with it, air travel is injurious to the environment and to those who travel. The interiors of airplanes are routinely sprayed with highly toxic pesticides, most of the interior of a plane is made of plastic that off-gasses toxic chemicals and one is seated in close proximity to every known disease for a number of hours. . . and more.

One passenger said he "absolutely never heard the word 'bomb' at all" during the uproar as the Orlando-bound flight prepared to leave Miami on Wednesday.

Federal officials say Rigoberto Alpizar made the threat in the jetway, after running up the plane's aisle from his seat at the back of the jetliner. They opened fire because the 44-year-old Home Depot employee ignored their orders to stop, reached into his backpack and said he had a bomb, according to authorities.

Alpizar's brother, speaking from Costa Rica, said he would never believe the shooting was necessary.

"I can't conceive that the marshals wouldn't be able to overpower an unarmed, single man, especially knowing he had already cleared every security check," Carlos Alpizar told The Orlando Sentinel.

Some passengers said they noticed Alpizar while waiting to get on the plane. They said he was singing "Go Down Moses" as his wife tried to calm him. Others said they saw him having lunch and described him as restless and anxious, but not dangerous.

"The wife was telling him, 'Calm down. Let other people get on the plane. It will be all right,'" said Alan Tirpak, a passenger.

Some passengers, including John McAlhany, said they believe Alpizar was no threat to anyone.

McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker who was returning home from a fishing trip in Key West, said he was sitting in Seat 21C when he noticed a commotion a few rows back.

"I heard him saying to his wife, 'I've got to get off the plane,'" McAlhany said. "He bumped me, bumped a couple of stewardesses. He just wanted to get off the plane."

Alpizar ran up the aisle into the first-class cabin, where marshals chased him onto the jetway, McAlhany said.

McAlhany said he "absolutely never heard the word 'bomb' at all."

"The first time I heard the word 'bomb' was when I was interviewed by the FBI," McAlhany said. "They kept asking if I heard him say the B-word. And I said, 'What is the B-word?' And they were like, 'Bomb.' I said no. They said, 'Are you sure?' And I am."

Added another passenger, Mary Gardner: "I did not hear him say that he had a bomb."

Officials say there was no bomb and they found no connection to terrorism.

Witnesses said Alpizar's wife, Anne Buechner, had frantically tried to explain he was bipolar, a mental illness also known as manic-depression, and was off his medication.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness called on the Air Marshal Service and other law enforcement agencies to train officers if they don't already in responding to people with severe mental illness.

Others said Alpizar's mental health didn't matter while marshals were trying to talk to him and determine if the threat was real.

Shooting to maim or injure - rather than kill - is not an option for federal agents, said John Amat, national operations vice president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, which includes air marshals in its membership.

"The person was screaming, saying he would blow up the plane, reaching into his bag - they had to react," Amat said.

"The bottom line is, we're trained to shoot to stop the threat," said Amat, who is also a deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service in Miami. "Hollywood has this perception that we are such marksmen we can shoot an arm or leg with accuracy. We can't. These guys were in a very tense situation. In their minds they had to believe this person was an imminent threat to themselves or the people on the plane."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the two air marshals appeared to have acted properly when they shot to kill.

Both air marshals were hired in 2002 from other federal law enforcement agencies and were placed on administrative leave, said Brian Doyle, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Miami-Dade Police were investigating and the medical examiner's office was performing an autopsy on Alpizar, who was from Costa Rica but became a U.S. citizen years ago. He lived in Maitland, an Orlando suburb.

Neighbors said the couple had been returning to their home from a missionary trip to Ecuador. Buechner works for the Council on Quality and Leadership based in Towson, Md., a nonprofit organization focused on improving life for people with disabilities and mental illness, the organization said in a statement.

David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, said he thinks the shooting may prove more "reassuring than disturbing" to the traveling public his organization represents. "This is a reminder they are there and are protecting the passengers and that it is a seriously deadly business," he said.

Armed police boarded the aircraft after the shooting, with some passengers in hysterics. McAlhany said he remembers having a shotgun pressed into his head by one officer, and hearing cries and screams from many passengers aboard the aircraft after the shooting in the jetway.

"This was wrong," McAlhany said. "This man should be with his family for Christmas. Now he's dead."

Associated Press writers Andrew Bridges, Mark Sherman and Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington; Mike Schneider and Travis Reed in Orlando; and Jessica Gresko and Tim Reynolds in Miami contributed to this story.

Miami Bomb Incident Starts to Look Suspicious

Eyewitness says Alpizar never mentioned bomb,
passengers were more afraid of Air Marshals putting guns to their heads

PAUL JOSEPH WATSON / Prisonplanet.com 9dec2005

 

Rigoberto Alpizar

The shooting of Rigoberto Alpizar at Miami International Airport stinks like a giant festering rat just two days after it happened. Alpizar never screamed that he had a bomb and passengers relate that they were more frightened of Air Marshals putting guns to their head and threatening them not to look at what was taking place on board American Airlines Flight 924. For those of us who researched the brutal murder of Charles De Menezes in London, striking parallels have begun to emerge.

We live in an age where government deception about everything under the sun is a matter of course and no major event can take place without us automatically being suspicious about whether there were underlying motives involved.

The incident seemed straightforward enough when the official version of what happened was released.

A mentally unstable man runs off a plane with a backpack screaming that he has a bomb and he is shuffling around in his bag apparently attempting to detonate it. Most people agree that to shoot him dead as the Air Marshals did was an extreme but necessary course of action to take.

Wait.

Let's take a step back here.

Is a real suicide bomber going to announce that he is trying to detonate a bomb? How many Palestinians have you heard about who explain what they are about to do and risk being apprehended before being able to do it?

Furthermore, we have eyewitnesses confirming that Rigoberto Alpizar's wife was hysterical in trying to get the message across that the man was mentally ill and did not have a bomb.

OK, so even considering these questions, many people would still maintain that if they were on the plane and this happened they would still want the guy filled with bullets, better to be safe than sorry.

This is where the waters begin to muddy.

Time Magazine [below] reported the comments of one of the passengers on board American Airlines Flight 924. This is what he had to say,

"I never heard the word 'bomb' on the plane," McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. "I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous."

So if we are to believe this eyewitness, the 'madman' Alpizar never claimed to have a bomb, therefore his only crime was running on a grounded plane.

If he didn't announce that he had a bomb then why was it necessary to shoot him dead?

McAlhany's account of the drama takes on an even more intriguing turn when we consider the following from Time Magazine,

When the incident began McAlhany was in seat 24C, in the middle of the plane. "[Alpizar] was in the back," McAlhany says, "a few seats from the back bathroom. He sat down." Then, McAlhany says, "I heard an argument with his wife. He was saying 'I have to get off the plane.' She said, 'Calm down.'"

Alpizar took off running down the aisle, with his wife close behind him. "She was running behind him saying, 'He's sick. He's sick. He's ill. He's got a disorder," McAlhany recalls. "I don't know if she said bipolar disorder [as one witness has alleged]. She was trying to explain to the marshals that he was ill. He just wanted to get off the plane."

McAlhany described Alpizar as carrying a big backpack and wearing a fanny pack in front. He says it would have been impossible for Alpizar to lie flat on the floor of the plane, as marshals ordered him to do, with the fanny pack on. "You can't get on the ground with a fanny pack," he says. "You have to move it to the side."

By the time Alpizar made it to the front of the airplane, the crew had ordered the rest of the passengers to get down between the seats. "I didn't see him get shot," he says. "They kept telling me to get down. I heard about five shots."

McAlhany says he tried to see what was happening just in case he needed to take evasive action. "I wanted to make sure if anything was coming toward me and they were killing passengers I would have a chance to break somebody's neck," he says. "I was looking through the seats because I wanted to see what was coming.

"I was on the phone with my brother. Somebody came down the aisle and put a shotgun to the back of my head and said put your hands on the seat in front of you. I got my cell phone karate chopped out of my hand. Then I realized it was an official."

In the ensuing events, many of the passengers began crying in fear, he recalls. "They were pointing the guns directly at us instead of pointing them to the ground," he says "One little girl was crying. There was a lady crying all the way to the hotel."

McAlhany said he saw Alpizar before the flight and is absolutely stunned by what unfolded on the airplane. He says he saw Alpizar eating a sandwich in the boarding area before getting on the plane. He looked normal at that time, McAlhany says. He thinks the whole thing was a mistake: "I don't believe he should be dead right now."

This account brings several facts into clearer view.

Either the government wanted Alpizar dead for their own reasons and carried out a targeted assassination under the guise of an anti-terror operation or this incident was staged to reinforce the myth that there are real terrorists running around that the government needs to protect us from by taking away our liberties.

This event will lead to even more choking airport security measures, reversing more rational trends which began with the announcement that small sharp objects would be allowed on planes again.

Whatever the case, this incident has uncanny parallels with the murder of Charles de Menezes by British undercover police one day after the supposed aborted second London bombings on July 22nd.

The official story seemed to justify the shooting. A man wearing a large padded jacket at the height of summer with wires trailing out jumps a barrier and runs for the nearest train in a manic fashion as he is followed by plain clothed police who had tracked him from a building under surveillance due to it potentially housing terrorists.

De Menezes dead on subway car

The official story of course turned out to be a complete lie fronted by Met Head (or meat head) Sir Ian Blair, who pathetically clung onto his job by endlessly repeating the same bullshit on British television for weeks after the event.

De Menezes was wearing a light denim jacket, was playing chase with his cousin, did not vault a barrier, did not have wires trailing from his jacket and was not seen coming from said building due to the policeman watching the building taking a piss at the time. CCTV tapes of the incident were seized by police who then claimed that the tapes didn't exist due to the cameras conveniently malfunctioning at that exact time, something which the London Underground workers wholesale denied.

This and many more startling inconsistencies prove that the police knew for certain that De Menezes was no suicide bomber but they had been ordered to kill him anyway.

De Menezes was a freelance electrician and potential knowledge of the shady 'electrical surge' explanation that preceded the official story of the London bombings could have sealed his fate.

The murder of Alpizar looks like it's in the same basket. No doubt the official probe will bring to light more damning evidence but then the establishment lackeys will just pardon their mob bosses anyway.

The Miami Police Department caught a lot of heat recently for their Constitution gutting 'Miami Shield' program, where cops will randomly lay siege to city buildings, ride buses and trains and demand to see ID's.

Were the events at the airport a response to that criticism? A message sent that we need to shut up and show obidience to authority because there are terrorist bombers out there that we need to be protected from? The timing of the two stories is at the very least interesting if not sinister.

This is a time of universal deceit, and any major event needs to be scrutinized without haste because in nearly every case the evidence points directly to government collusion and cover-up.

Eyewitness:
"I Never Heard the Word 'Bomb'"

A passenger on Flight 924 gives his account of the shooting and says
Rigoberto Alpizar never claimed to have a bomb

SIOBHAN MORRISSEY / Time 8dec2005

 

Miami — At least one passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 924 maintains the federal air marshals were a little too quick on the draw when they shot and killed Rigoberto Alpizar as he frantically attempted to run off the airplane shortly before take-off.

"I don't think they needed to use deadly force with the guy," says John McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker from Sebastian, Fla. "He was getting off the plane." McAlhany also maintains that Alpizar never mentioned having a bomb.

"I never heard the word 'bomb' on the plane," McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. "I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous." Even the authorities didn't come out and say bomb, McAlhany says. "They asked, 'Did you hear anything about the b-word?'" he says. "That's what they called it."

When the incident began McAlhany was in seat 24C, in the middle of the plane. "[Alpizar] was in the back," McAlhany says, "a few seats from the back bathroom. He sat down." Then, McAlhany says, "I heard an argument with his wife. He was saying 'I have to get off the plane.' She said, 'Calm down.'"

Alpizar took off running down the aisle, with his wife close behind him. "She was running behind him saying, 'He's sick. He's sick. He's ill. He's got a disorder," McAlhany recalls. "I don't know if she said bipolar disorder [as one witness has alleged]. She was trying to explain to the marshals that he was ill. He just wanted to get off the plane."

McAlhany described Alpizar as carrying a big backpack and wearing a fanny pack in front. He says it would have been impossible for Alpizar to lie flat on the floor of the plane, as marshals ordered him to do, with the fanny pack on. "You can't get on the ground with a fanny pack," he says. "You have to move it to the side."

By the time Alpizar made it to the front of the airplane, the crew had ordered the rest of the passengers to get down between the seats. "I didn't see him get shot," he says. "They kept telling me to get down. I heard about five shots."

McAlhany says he tried to see what was happening just in case he needed to take evasive action. "I wanted to make sure if anything was coming toward me and they were killing passengers I would have a chance to break somebody's neck," he says. "I was looking through the seats because I wanted to see what was coming.

"I was on the phone with my brother. Somebody came down the aisle and put a shotgun to the back of my head and said put your hands on the seat in front of you. I got my cell phone karate chopped out of my hand. Then I realized it was an official."

In the ensuing events, many of the passengers began crying in fear, he recalls. "They were pointing the guns directly at us instead of pointing them to the ground," he says "One little girl was crying. There was a lady crying all the way to the hotel."

McAlhany said he saw Alpizar before the flight and is absolutely stunned by what unfolded on the airplane. He says he saw Alpizar eating a sandwich in the boarding area before getting on the plane. He looked normal at that time, McAlhany says. He thinks the whole thing was a mistake: "I don't believe he should be dead right now."

source: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1138965,00.html 9dec2005

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