Jamaican SWAT team

[Snowparrot]

It's been all over the news here, but maybe you missed it in the USA, Australia, the UK and elsewhere.
A deranged Jamaican took over a Canadian charter plane in Montego Bay (MBJ) on Sunday night. Cool flight attendants got the passengers off the plane, and the Jamaican Prime Minister negotiated through the night. Then the REAL Jamaican SWAT team (actually called the Jamaica Defence Force assault team) came in to capture the gunman.

I missed this by less than a week, and I can tell you, MBJ is a very hard airport to get into or out of as a passenger!

From the Ottawa Citizen today:Canadian special forces from Petawawa helped train the Jamaican team that stormed a hijacked airliner in Montego Bay on Monday and captured a mentally troubled gunman without firing a shot.

The Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR) has had a small team in Jamaica over the last several months conducting training as part of a joint counter-terrorism program with that country.

The Jamaica Defence Force assault team that stormed the CanJet Boeing 737 were trained by the Canadians, but CSOR members did not take part in the raid.
“CSOR had a hand in training the assault team,” confirmed Lt.-Cmdr. Walter Moniz, the spokesman for Canadian Special Operations Forces Command in Ottawa.

CSOR members have been training the Jamaica Defence Force’s counter-terrorism unit in various techniques.

“It’s not a large team, but we’ve got some good senior guys doing what we refer to as DDMA or Defence Diplomacy and Military Assistance,” Moniz added.


Passengers, CanJet crew safe after Jamaican hijack drama
MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica


Suzanne Ferguson believed she was about to die in her own 9/11 nightmare just 10 days before her wedding.

When Ferguson first saw Stephen Fray, waving a gun around as he stormed her airliner Sunday night, the horror of the Twin Towers flashed through her mind.

“I thought he wanted to crash the plane like in New York. That’s what we were all thinking. He wasn’t going to shoot us all. He only had a small gun.”

This time, a set of heroics in the same spirit that the world witnessed on Sept. 11, 2001 — a brave and cunning Canadian flight crew and a ruthlessly precise squad of elite Jamaican commandos — turned out to be enough to save the day as Canada’s hijack drama in Jamaica had a happy ending for everybody, including Fray, who was captured alive.

The deeply troubled young man paralysed a major Caribbean airport and created chaos and fear inside the passenger cabin of CanJet Flight 918 and across two countries when he demanded to be flown to Cuba to escape his Jamaican home and the demons in his own mind.

“Today is a day to be truly joyful,” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who arrived in Jamaica two hours before the hijacking for a working visit.

The first link in the chain of not-so-random events that led to the hijacking was forged one year ago, when the first sign of Fray’s mental illness surfaced.

“This is a decent young man who is having a period of depression,” said Janet Silvera, a local newspaper reporter whose son was a friend of Fray. As Fray’s behaviour changed, friends noticed he was becoming more withdrawn, a condition that deepened with some bizarre behaviour three months ago, she said.

At 10:20 p.m. Sunday, wearing an official looking badge and a striped shirt that suggested a uniform, Fray breeze through security at Sangster International Airport with a loaded gun. He walked straight onto the parked Canjet plane, which had just arrived from Halifax and was about to carry on to Havana, Cuba.

“This is a real hijacking, this is f---king serious. I want out of the country,” Fray shouted as he burst onto the plane.

Passengers first thought they were part of a surreal movie, but reality set in, setting off sobbing and praying throughout the cabin.

Flight attendants rushed four children, aged seven to 13, to the back of the plane and told them to hit the floor. When some adults moved towards the back, Fray got even more enraged and told everybody to stay put.

The news quickly reached Jamaica’s capital, Kingston, four hours away by car, as pounding on a hotel room door roused Canada’s prime minister. “Once I figured out, it’s not a dream, obviously, I was stunned,” Harper said.

Back on the plane, the situation went from bad to worse, to better again before settling into a stalemate that lasted until 6:20 a.m., with Fray holding six crew members at gunpoint.

They were the only people left behind after flight attendants staged a daring bid to win the safety of the 159 passengers. They had a showdown with Fray, who, as they moved people to the back of the plane, shouted at them to close the main door and get the plane airborne for Cuba.
“He had the gun up to the stewardess’s neck, and, when the co-pilot walked out, he shot,” Halifax resident Shari Euloth said. Fray fired a single bullet out the open cabin door. No one got hit.

There were more outbursts later.

“He got out the fire extinguisher and he sprayed down all the stewardesses with it at the front of the plane, in front of everybody,” Euloth said. “I thought he was going to blow us up.”

Undaunted, the flight attendants offered a daring bargain: Why not let the passengers go if they left their money and possessions behind? Fray bought it. “Leave everything on the plane, leave everything on the plane. Get out! Run! Don’t take your bags. You have a chance to get out. Take it!” Ferguson recalled the flight attendants calling out as passengers filed off.

The six crew members who remained behind were among eight in total: Capt. James Murphy from Halifax, first officer Glenn Johnson from Montreal, flight attendants Nicole Rogers and Heidi Tofflemire of Halifax, Anu Goswami, Tony Bettencourt and Carolina Santizo Arriola of Toronto and air-care security officer Garry Knickle of Halifax.

“They put themselves between us and the hijackers at all times to make sure that we were safe,” said another Halifax passenger, Jill Eaton.

Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding took charge of the negotiation. He called in Fray’s family members and friends to try to talk the young man into surrendering, but their pleas failed.

Golding eventually ordered a commando raid. Fray was captured without a shot being fired and the six remaining crew members were safe.

The Jamaican PM promised a full investigation of the security breach, but refused to speculate on how a gunman was able to smuggle a weapon through the airport.

Fray was being interrogated on Monday and had yet to be charged.

Jamaican authorities said this was first time such a security failing had occurred at one of their airports.

Harper was not ready to point fingers.

“We all know from our experience in our own country, systems are not perfect,” he said. “What matters is how one responds to challenges when one is confronted with them.”

CanJet announced late Monday night that a plane carrying 40 of the 159 passengers had arrived back in Halifax.

Another plane carrying the members of the crew of Flight 918 also arrived in the Nova Scotia capital. At the request of the RCMP, CanJet said, they would only be available to meet the media today.

[blackjack]

I hear their motto is "Every little ting's gonna be all right."

[RinglingRingling]

HU-16, Boeing 737... big difference.

[shakerofsalt]

After flying in & out of Sangster a few times, I can't say I was surprised by this at all.

[Snowparrot]

After flying in & out of Sangster a few times, I can't say I was surprised by this at all.

Last week, we were dropped at the airport door at 11:45, and stood in the check-in line, and then the Immigration (we're LEAVING, right?) line, and finally made it to the (thankfully very short) security line at 12:54. Since our flight was boarding at 1:20, we had a VERY quick sandwich and beer at the Jamaica Bobsled Team. Got to the gate as they were calling our names but at least we didn't have to spend extra time sitting on the boring plane.

The entry process takes about the same time, as the officers move at a very deliberate pace, and have lots of writing to do. On the way in, our baggage had finished its circulation on the caroussel well before we finished ours.

I love Jamaica, anyway. It's just the getting in and out of MBJ that's hard... unless you have a pass and a weapon, I guess.

[shakerofsalt]

After flying in & out of Sangster a few times, I can't say I was surprised by this at all.

Last week, we were dropped at the airport door at 11:45, and stood in the check-in line, and then the Immigration (we're LEAVING, right?) line, and finally made it to the (thankfully very short) security line at 12:54. Since our flight was boarding at 1:20, we had a VERY quick sandwich and beer at the Jamaica Bobsled Team. Got to the gate as they were calling our names but at least we didn't have to spend extra time sitting on the boring plane.

The entry process takes about the same time, as the officers move at a very deliberate pace, and have lots of writing to do. On the way in, our baggage had finished its circulation on the caroussel well before we finished ours.

I love Jamaica, anyway. It's just the getting in and out of MBJ that's hard... unless you have a pass and a weapon, I guess.

We have had to wait almost 2 hours to enter, but it has always been a breeze to leave. We tipped a Red Cap $10 once and he went to the security people and told them we tip. We learned a little $ (a couple of bucks here and there) will get you right through! Our friends didn't tip and their bags/luggage were pretty much dumped out on the tables to sort while ours was just unzipped and zipped back up. We got right through everything fast, but they didn't. My husband likes to get to airports super early in case there are lines, so maybe we have just been there early enough not to encounter the very long wait to leave!