Guilty of sabotage

Airline mechanic admits tampering with 737 passenger jet

A LONGTIME airline mechanic with possible links to Muslim extremists has pleaded guilty to sabotaging an American Airlines jetliner with 150 people on board, causing the pilot to abort the flight just before takeoff at Miami.

Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani has previously admitted that he committed the sabotage but insisted it was an attempt to gain overtime to fix the jet – which he did.

“I do admit the guilt,” Alani, shackled and wearing tan jail clothing, said through an Arabic interpreter.

Alani, 60, is a naturalised US citizen originally from Iraq who had been an airline mechanic for 30 years.

Prosecutors say he has a brother in Iraq who may be involved with the Islamic State extremist group and that he had made statements wishing Allah would use “divine powers” to harm non-Muslims.

Investigators said Alani also had Islamic State videos on his phone depicting mass murders and that he travelled to Iraq in March but did not disclose that to the FBI after his arrest.

Despite that evidence, Alani was never charged with any terrorism-related crime.

He pleaded guilty to attempted destruction of an aircraft, which carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence, but he will likely get less prison time when he is sentenced on March 4.

Court documents reveal the sabotage involved gluing styrofoam inside the nose of the Boeing 737 so that it disabled a component pilots use to monitor airspeed, altitude and the pitch of the plane.

Authorities say that, if the flight had taken off as planned on July 17 for Nassau, in the Bahamas, the sabotage could have caused a crash. Many of Alani’s actions were captured on surveillance video.

“(Alani’s) conduct is not representative of the world-class work performed every day by our 15,000 Technical Operations safety professionals,” American Airlines said.

Alani’s lawyer, Jonathan Meltz, said he had led a “lawabiding life” before this incident and was “just trying to provide for his family”.