Enlarge image
Lufthansa machines at Frankfurt Airport (archive picture): He will start a new life, wrote one
Photo: DANIEL ROLAND / AFP
A group of four Indians who wanted to travel to the USA with forged papers triggered a terrorist alarm and a large-scale deployment of the federal police at Frankfurt Airport on Saturday.
Shortly before the take-off of a Lufthansa plane in the Mexican holiday resort of Cancun, fellow travelers noticed that the four young men were writing a conspicuously large number of messenger messages when the A340 with around 200 passengers was already taxiing to the runway.
more on the subject
Deadly corona crisis: India's hellfire by Laura Höflinger and Adnan Bhat, Delhi
Corona crisis: The mystery of India's lower number of infections by Maria Stöhr
Another passenger then photographed the messages and had them translated into French using an Internet program.
According to the translation, one of the Indian passengers wrote that he was starting a new life.
The passenger wrongly interpreted this as a kind of suicide note and alerted the crew, fearing an impending terrorist attack.
The captain immediately stopped take-off and parked the aircraft on the apron.
The first research seemed to confirm the passenger's suspicions, so the four Indian men had not checked in any luggage and were sitting individually on the plane.
An immediately alerted Federal Police team with an explosive dog checked the four Indians, but found no abnormalities.
Only later did it emerge that the men with forged Portuguese residence permits in their passports were to be smuggled on first to Mexico and then to the USA.
You are now being sent back to India.
The other passengers did not go on to Cancun on Saturday, the flight should be made up on Sunday.
