Nine men thrown off flight after one of them shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’

Nine men were thrown off a Ryanair flight to Madrid on Saturday morning after one of them shouted “Allahu Akbar” and joked that there was a bomb on board.

The flight, which had been due to leave Zaventem airport in Brussels at 7am that morning, was delayed for several hours with all the passengers being ordered to get off after the false scare.

Police confirmed the incident to the local news channel VTM NIEUWS. According to them, the men who were all of Belgian nationality were getting on board the Ryanair flight when one of them was heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” and indicating there was a bomb on board.

Passengers were evacuated from the plane, which was then searched by a bomb squad.

The flight commander refused to take these nine people. One of them was a foolish joker and called ‘Allahu Akbar’, said Peter De Waele of the federal police.

All the luggage had to be taken off as the bomb squad and sniffer dogs searched the plane. Nothing suspicious was found and the plane was eventually allowed to leave at 9.25am, two hours after its scheduled departure time.

The 51-year-old Belgian who sparked the false terror alert and thought to have been drunk was arrested along with eight friends travelling with him and were thrown off the flight. The man could face prosecution for threatening a terror attack.

Police said the “joke” had not been appreciated by either the airline or the passengers, many of whom had been extremely worried by the threat.

In March 2016, both the Brussels-Zaventem airport and the city’s metro were the subject of separate terrorist attacks that killed 32 people.