Man charged with hijacking one day after flights grounded at Vancouver Airport
Shaheer Cassim, born in 1986, has been charged with hijacking and had 'ideological motive', police say
A man has been charged with hijacking, one day after an incident that saw flights grounded at Vancouver's airport for a little under an hour.
Shaheer Cassim, who was born in 1986, has been charged with one count of hijacking, according to court records online. RCMP said that his next court appearance will be on July 22.
On Tuesday afternoon, police arrested a man after a small Cessna 172 plane landed at the airport around 1:45 p.m. PT on Tuesday.
They said that they had received reports around 1 p.m. that the plane had been hijacked from Vancouver Island before entering Vancouver International Airport (YVR) airspace.
No one was injured. RCMP say the man they arrested was the sole occupant of the plane.
A YVR spokesperson told CBC News on Tuesday that flights were grounded for just under 40 minutes as a result of the alleged hijacking, and nine flights had to be diverted to other airports.
Few details were released by police on Tuesday. Richmond RCMP told CBC News on Wednesday that its federal counterparts had taken over the investigation.
Under the Criminal Code, a charge of hijacking can be laid for a variety of reasons — which include confining people on board an aircraft against their will, transporting them to an unscheduled location against their will, or causing an aircraft to deviate from its flight plan by using force or threats.
A spokesperson for the Public Prosecution Service of Canada said that the hijacking also constitutes a terrorist offence and a terrorist activity under two sections of the Criminal Code.
In a statement on Wednesday evening, police said that Cassim allegedly threatened a flight instructor and hijacked the plane at Victoria International Airport.
"Investigators have determined the suspect acted with an ideological motive to disrupt airspace," said Sgt. Tammy Lobb, though she did not specify what the motive was.
One in a million case, flying club says
According to the Victoria International Airport, the aircraft is operated by the Victoria Flying Club.
Club president Colin Williamson said that the club operated 12,000 flights per year, and this was the first case of its kind he had encountered, dubbing it "truly a one in a million situation."
"We've had, you know, people bang a wing tip into another plane, you know, fender benders, if you will, hit marker lights ... I mean, all of that stuff happens when you run a flight school because you are teaching people to fly," he said.
"But this? No, never. It's just completely out of the blue."
Williamson said that he was limited in what information he could share with the media on Wednesday, and that RCMP were currently examining the plane before it could be given back to the flight club.
The flight club president told CBC News that an instructor was required to check out the keys to the plane, and the man who allegedly hijacked the plane showed up, saying he wanted to be a passenger on a plane.
However, Williamson did not go into detail about what happened after the instructor checked out the keys or whether the instructor was threatened, though he did confirm the man was not a member of the flight club.
The Victoria Flying Club operates many types of passenger services, which include sightseeing tours, charter flights and discovery flights where a student pilot goes along with an instructor.
Williamson said the club was looking after its staff and offering counselling, though he did not specify exactly what type of flight was involved in Tuesday's alleged hijacking incident.
"It wasn't in any way anything special and ... one of our normal training planes that we fly all the time," he said.
"Our people, I'm really proud of them," he added. "Everybody really pulled together ... because it's distressing, you know, because we're like family to each other."
NORAD scrambles fighter jets
A spokesperson for the Canadian Armed Forces told CBC News in a statement that the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) scrambled U.S. F-15 fighter jets in response to the alleged hijacking on Tuesday.
NORAD said that they were deployed after reports that the civilian pilot of a "small general aviation aircraft" was not communicating with air traffic controllers.
However, the flight had landed before fighter jets intercepted it.
The spokesperson did not say where the fighter jets departed from.
"NORAD F-15s responded to this incident as they were closest and able to be on scene the fastest," it wrote. "CF-18s were in the process of responding, but the incident resolved before any NORAD assets arrived on station."
'Some type of protest'
In air traffic communications around the time of the alleged hijacking, unidentified air traffic controllers are heard saying just after 1:30 p.m. PT on Tuesday that the pilot of the Cessna "has indicated within 10 minutes he plans to land and expects to be arrested."
"There is a Cessna over the airport, around 500 feet, some type of protest," an unidentified air traffic controller is heard saying on another recording.
In another air traffic control recording, controllers were asked when the last time something like this occurred.
The answer was, "Maybe the '70s."
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With files from Katie DeRosa, Courtney Dickson, Jessica Cheung and Liam Britten