Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Saturday

Man Arrested Trying to Board Airplane With Gun in Luggage

Aired August 31, 2002 - 18:08   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: A Swedish citizen is denying that he was planning a hijacking. Police say he was arrested with a gun in his luggage trying to board a plane heading to England.
CNN's Diana Muriel joins us by phone from Stockholm, Sweden with the story on that -- Diana.

DIANA MURIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Martin, the 29-year old man who's been identified as Karem Chatty, a Swedish national of Tunisian origin, is still being held by Swedish authorities at a high security jail near the town of Vasteras, about 100 kilometers northwest of the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. He was arrested at Vasteras airport on Thursday, as he was attempting to board an aircraft carrying a 6.5 caliber pistol, a loaded pistol, in his hand luggage believed to have been contained in a bag of toiletries. He was traveling on a Ryan air flight, a discount airline flight, from Stockholm to London's Stanstead Airport, and traveling as part of a group of people due to attend an Islamic conference in Birmingham.

He is being questioned by Swedish police and will be continued to be questioned by them during the course of the weekend. We are expecting that he will be charged early next week Monday or Tuesday. It's not certain yet what the charges might be, but speculation is rising that they will -- they could include at one count of attempted hijacking and one count of the illegal possession of a firearm.

Swedish authorities have a deadline of Monday, mid-day local time, to apply for a court appearance. Now the man has not requested an attorney, but the chief public prosecutor Thomas Hajjstrom from Uppsula has appointed him an attorney. Nils Uggla is representing Karem Chatty. And this is what he had to say earlier about his client's situation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NILS UGGLA, KAREM CHATTY'S LAWYER: (through translator) Well, he denies that it has anything with terrorist actions or a plane hijacking.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But why bring a loaded weapon on board an airplane?

UGGLA: he has quite a good explanation as to why it ended up there, but it is an explanation that I cannot go into.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now there's information that they were planning to crash the plane into an American embassy somewhere in Europe. How do you comment on that?

UGGLA: Well, that is information which I haven't heard. That's up to the person who gave the information to confirm. There is probably, as far as I know, no grounds for that statement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURIEL: British authorities have moved to try and dampen down this discussion of a possible U.S. embassy target in continental Europe. They've also denied that two officers from the United States intelligence service, the CIA, as well as two officers from the United Kingdom's MI-5 counter espionage service have flown to Sweden to assist with the investigation.

However, they have confirmed media reports the man had an incomplete pilot education in the United States. We understand that he was the student at the North American Institute of Aviation at Conway, in South Carolina. He failed to complete the course there. He was trained to fly light aircraft Pipers and Cessnas. Although Swedish authorities say that it is possible that he did complete his training elsewhere, Martin.

SAVIDGE: CNN's Diana Muriel on the phone from Stockholm. Thank you very much.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com