Air France flight takes an emergency landing after finding an suspect device

KENYAN and French police are holding five suspects and analysing a suspected bomb removed from an Air France plane at the Moi International Airport in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

The four had all been on board Air France Flight 463, a Boeing 777 bound from Mauritius to Paris, which was diverted to the coastal Kenyan city of Mombasa after the device was found, Kenyan Cabinet secretary for the Ministry of Interior Joseph Nkaissery told CNN. The lawsuit doesn’t name a perpetrator but leaves it to investigators to determine who might be prosecuted, and allows Air France to seek damages in an eventual trial.

France has been under a state of emergency since the November 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead and hundreds wounded.

Six passengers were being questioned, including the person who informed the crew about the device, said a Kenyan police official who is part of the investigation and who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

“All the information available to us at the moment indicates the object was not capable of creating an explosion or damaging a plane, but was rather a mixture of cardboard, sheets of paper and a timer”.

When the plane landed, passenger John Stephen said crew members helped safely evacuate people using emergency slides.

Gagey said arrangements were being made to fly the passengers and crew back to Paris, adding that they would return late on Sunday or early Monday.

Air France’s chief executive Gagey said the object was found “in a small cupboard behind the mirror” in the toilet. All passengers were safely evacuated and the device was taken out.

Mombasa County Commissioner Nelson Marwa said passengers had departed on another plane sent by Air France to pick them up.

“We’re in touch with Mauritius to know how security screening of passengers was done”. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for those attacks and for downing a plane carrying Russian tourists out of Egypt in October.

“The personnel of Air France were just great, so they keep everybody calm”.

“They are now airborne, but a few among them who we were interrogating have remained with us, until ongoing investigations are done”.