Videotaping the Terror Attempt on Flight 253?
UPDATE: A Third Plotter Arrested?

A man apparently videotaped the whole flight, according to witnesses, and the attempted bombing, of course.

...They were sitting about 20 rows behind Abdulmutallab, in a center aisle with her husband and daughter a row ahead of her and their two new adopted children, a six-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy.

Her daughter said that ahead of them was a man who videotaped the entire flight, including the attempted detonation.

"He sat up and videotaped the entire thing, very calmly," said Patricia. "We do know that the FBI is looking for him intensely. Since then, we've heard nothing about it."

This of course could be just some harmless activity that appears sinister in retrospect.

If it's genuine, I wonder what Al Qaeda's idea is here. If the bombing were a success, the camera would probably have been destroyed, and even if it weren't, it would be found by US authorities who presumably would keep it a secret (so as not to spread panic).

Perhaps it's a back-up plan -- if the bombing fails, this guy can still probably get off the plane, and upload the video for the world's horror, thus completing the important terror step in terrorism, even minus the actual mayhem and death.

Or, of course, if it fails -- Al Qaeda has a record of how security responded to the man and thwarted him.

Joke's on them in that case, then: Security didn't respond to the man or thwart him.

Ha, ha.

Don't we all feel wonderful about that.

I suppose a last possibility is if this plane had Go-Go in-flight internet... maybe he was periodically streaming video to some server in Dubai or something.

Update: Three men involved in attempt? Huh.

This is Kurt Haskell, the same guy who claimed he saw an Indian man trying to talk security into letting Abdulmutallab on the plane without a passport; skip ahead to around 3:15 and listen to him explain how that wasn’t the only Indian (Pakistani?) man who figured into the day’s events and how the contraption taped to the bomber’s crotch might not have been the only explosives on board. Remember, according to yet another passenger, there was a third man on the plane who was “very calmly” videotaping the entire flight, including the moment when the passengers jumped the bomber. Sounds like he’s not the same guy as the mysterious Indian man described by Haskell, as the latter was supposedly arrested on the spot whereas the former was allegedly allowed to leave and is now being sought by the feds. How big of a cell was on this flight, exactly?

Allah lost me there; I think this guy was arrested, whereas the videotaping man was allowed to leave.

Video at Hot Air.

UPDATE: A Third Plotter Arrested?&bodytext=A man apparently videotaped the whole flight, according to witnesses, and the attempted bombing, of course. ...They were sitting about 20 rows behind Abdulmutallab, in a center aisle with her husband and daughter a row ahead of her and their...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 05:21 PM

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