LANKAN PASSENGER’S BOMB THREAT DISRUPTS MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT

Manodh Marks allegedly claimed to have a bomb as he rushed towards the cockpit door of flight MH128, just minutes after take-off at 11.11 pm on Wednesday night.

The 25-year-old trainee chef, who is in Australia on a student visa, was arrested early on Thursday and charged with threatening to blow up the aircraft and all onboard.

But just hours before Marks allegedly said he’d ‘blow up this f***ing plane’, he posted video to his Instagram account of him smoking and listening to loud music en route to Tullamarine Airport, in Melbourne.

Sharing videos of his car ride to Tullamarine Airport, on the outskirts of Melbourne to Instagram, he appeared relaxed as he travelled past a number of major landmarks.

Captioning the footage: ‘Ain’t about the money im (sic) going Home... lets roll’, he can be seen smoking as he drives over the Bolte Bridge and past the Melbourne Star. The three videos, shared to his social media page shortly before 8pm on Wednesday night, gave no indication of the terrifying attack he allegedly launched three hours later.

His Facebook account, which says he is from Colombo, Sri Lanka, is littered with a number of shirtless selfies and pictures of Marks wearing army camouflage clothes.

Seemingly a music lover, he regularly posts images and quotes from legendary artists including Tupac Shakur, Rihanna and Bob Marley. Marks also has an account on online dating site Badoo, on which he claims he’s ‘here to make new friends’.

But on Wednesday night, shortly after take-off, Marks allegedly stood up and began attacking an air-hostess, ‘screaming’ at her that he ‘needed to see the captain’.

‘I’ve got a bomb and I’m going to f***ing blow the plane up,’ former AFL footballer Andrew Leoncelli, who confronted the man, quoted him as saying.

‘He started yelling louder: “I need to see the pilot”. And got louder and louder and eventually they screamed for help,’ Mr Leoncelli said.

‘So that’s when I jumped up. I said, “Mate, get back to your f***ing seat”.’

‘Literally he was eyeball to eyeball with me saying he was going to blow the plane up... he looked like a lunatic.’

Mr Leoncelli said the man, who was tall and had dark skin, was holding a ‘huge, metallic, unusual’ object the size of a watermelon with two short antennas.

‘We spent an hour and a half sitting on the plane sh***ing our dacks that this thing might blow up,’ he told Triple M radio. Marks faces two charges against the Crimes Aviation Act and will appear in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Thursday afternoon.

Heroic passengers on board the plane reportedly tackled the man to the ground and hogtied him after he launched his attack. Scottish man Robert Macdonald was in Australia visiting his family and responded when a flight attendant called for help. ‘The girl called for help... (it’s) the thing you do,’ he told reporters on Thursday.

‘He had four or five us, quite big guys, he didn’t have a chance. (We put) knees on him, hands on him.’

Mr Macdonald said the stewards tied the man up with a seat belt and then used plastic wire to restrain his hands.

Dramatic audio recordings captured the terrifying moment the pilot of MH128 was forced to call air traffic control after the man allegedly threatened to to blow up the plane.

‘We have a passenger trying to enter the cockpit. He is claiming to have an explosive device. He tried to enter the cockpit,’ the pilot can be heard saying calmly.

‘He has been overpowered by passengers, however we’d like to land and have the device checked out.’ (DAILY MAIL)