The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested a man they say took over a plane flying out of Victoria International Airport by threatening a flight instructor.
They said Shaheer Cassim, 39, threatened an instructor on board a single-engine Cessna 172 plane on Tuesday and subsequently took over the plane while it was still at the Victoria, Canada, airport on Vancouver Island, leaving in the aircraft by himself.
Police did not specify the nature of the alleged threat against the flight instructor. No one was injured in the incident.
The plane ultimately landed at Vancouver International Airport on the Canadian mainland, where police arrested Mr. Cassim without further incident. Authorities charged Mr. Cassim with hijacking, and he is due back in court next Tuesday.
“Investigators have determined the suspect acted with an ideological motive to disrupt airspace,” RCMP Sgt. Tammy Lobb said. The police did not say what ideology motivated Mr. Cassim’s alleged actions.
A man who looks like Mr. Cassim and shares his name claimed on social media to be a messianic figure sent to stop climate change, posting that “the Angel Gabriel appeared before me and gave me a message from Allah,” according to The Associated Press.
Mr. Cassim previously held a news conference in Victoria in 2012 to kick off a bicycle ride across Canada to raise awareness of climate change, according to The Canadian Press, the national news agency.
The alleged hijacker has flight experience and was formerly an employee of a now-defunct airline that operated on Vancouver Island.
The owners of that airline, Lars and Diana Banke, told The Canadian Press that Mr. Cassim was one of their best pilots but that he also believed the world was ending. The religious angle, however, was new.
“He never spoke religion with us. I’m really surprised that he would’ve done something like this,” Ms. Banke told the AP.
