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Cockpit intruder a paranoiac
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THE man who burst into the cockpit of a British Airways jumbo jet and tried to seize the controls was not trying to hijack or crash the airliner, doctors said on Monday.
Paul Kefa Mukonyi, who was restrained after a two-minute struggle during which the airliner fell 3,000 metres, was suffering from extreme paranoia and believed he was in danger. Dr Frank Njenga, a psychaitrist treating Mukonyi, 27, at Nairobi hospital, said his patient was presently unfit to stand trial should he be charged with any offence.
Dr Njenga said: "We are of the very firm belief that at no point did our patient contemplate hijacking or doing harm to anyone. He felt completely crowded and he said people in front and behind were threatening him. He ran toward the front of the airplane believing people were in hot pursuit of him. He was suffering from an illness that made him feel insecure, afraid, unprotected."
Mukonyi, who is studying tourism at a university in Lyon, France, was said to be unaware of the near-disaster he had caused when he ran into the cockpit. During the fight on the flight deck the autopilot became disengaged and the aircraft, flying from Gatwick, London, to Nairobi on Sunday with 398 passengers and crew on board, went into a series of lurches and dives before the co-pilot regained control.
The pilot later said that if the struggle had lasted another few seconds, the co-pilot would have been unable to regain control as the airliner was about to flip upside-down.(SD-Agencies)
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