Somali government officials said Saturday airport security cameras caught two people dressed in military uniforms passing a laptop to the passenger who died after Tuesday’s mid-flight bomb blast aboard a passenger plane.
“The National Intelligence Agency has security recordings showing two men giving a laptop, in a hidden way, to a passenger man. The man was identified as the dead body ejected out of the hole created by the explosion,” Cabinet spokesman Abdisalan Ahmed Ato told VOA’s Somali service.
An official of the Somali Intelligence Agency told VOA earlier that Mogadishu airport staff and employees of Daallo Airlines were among those who have been detained for questioning, including two people suspected of assisting the suspected bomber.
Ato said investigators have detained more than 20 people so far, and that government officers and business people with suspected links to the incident are among them.
At a news conference in Mogadishu Saturday, Somali Aviation Minister Ali Ahmed Jangali identified the man who died as Abdullahi Abdisalam Boorle, saying he was sucked out of the plane through the hole left by the explosion.
The minister would not say whether Boorle was linked to the attack, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation. A senior Somali security official told VOA that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is helping Somalia with the probe.
The blast forced the pilot of Flight 159, bound for Djibouti with 74 passengers on board, to make an emergency landing about 15 minutes after take-off from Mogadishu.
Somalia’s former director of national intelligence, Ahmed Moallim Fiqi, told VOA earlier that the nature of the attack and evidence pointed to “a planned bomb attack” against the airliner.
Source:VOA
