THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The Dutch traveler who has been hailed as a hero for stopping a suspected bomber on a U.S.-bound flight said the whole thing felt like a movie script — his own.
Jasper Schuringa, a video producer who leapt onto the Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Detroit- bound airliner, said he wrote a script eight years ago about a failed suicide attack at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, the same place from which the Christmas Day flight took off.
“It is about a suicide bomber who wants to murder a politician at Schiphol. But at the crucial moment the bomb doesn’t go off,” Schuringa said in an interview in Miami published in the Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad on Thursday.
Schuringa did not say what became of the script.
He jumped on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after the 23-year-old student allegedly tried to detonate explosives.
Schuringa said he reacted instinctively when he saw Abdulmutallab sitting in his seat with flames rising around him.
Helped by other passengers, he patted down the flames with his bare hands and then dragged Abdulmutallab to the front of the aircraft, where passengers ripped off Abdulmutallab’s clothes to remove the small package filled with the explosive pentrite.
“How did I know what I should do? I don’t know, I just did,” he said. “Maybe I’ve watched too many American movies.” The Associated Press
