BOSTON, Dec 23: A US airliner carrying 185 passengers and 12 crew from Paris to Miami was diverted to Boston on Saturday under the escort of two US air force fighter jets after suspicions arose that a man on board was carrying explosives hidden in his shoes. The suspect was overpowered by fellow passengers during the American Airlines flight.

US authorities were trying to determine whether the man suspected of attempting to blow up the Boeing 767 over the Atlantic was acting alone or connected to a terror network, a senator said.

France’s Europe 1 radio, quoting intelligence sources, said the bomb suspect had told FBI officials he was a Sri Lankan named Rajid. The officials considered this name a pseudonym.

“One thing that’s certain is that the man did spend some time in Belgium,” the radio said.

The radio said its intelligence sources noted that several suspected members of Osama bin Laden’s

Al Qaeda network had recently passed through Brussels, where a sophisticated network for supplying false identity papers was known to operate.

Sen Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the US Senate’s intelligence committee, told the CBS programme, “Face the Nation”, that he had been briefed by the FBI and that preliminary information indicated the man had explosives in his shoes when he was overpowered.

“The message here is as this unfolds that terrorists are going to hit us again, I’ve said that. Is it part of a widespread deal or was this guy acting alone, we don’t know yet,” Shelby said. “What I believe is now, although we’ve made a lot of headway since September 11 as far as air safety, we’ve got a long way to go.”

Despite early skepticism that explosives were involved, Shelby said the FBI was taking the incident very seriously.

“It would be my judgment from what I’ve observed that this man was trying to blow himself up and blow the plane up and we are very fortunate it didn’t happen,” he said.

A White House spokesman said President George W. Bush was monitoring the situation.

“He is being briefed by appropriate officials,” said spokesman Scott Stanzel. Bush is with his family members at the Camp David presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains outside Washington.

Federal officials said the man appeared to be travelling on a false British passport bearing the name Richard Reid that was issued in Belgium three weeks ago. The suspect was being held in Boston and faced an initial charge of interfering with a flight crew, an FBI spokeswoman said.

‘UNBELIEVABLY STRONG’: Passengers from the diverted flight began arriving in Miami early on Sunday. One of them, 6’8” professional basketball player Kwame James, said three or four men had a hard time pinning the suspect down.

James said a flight attendant had summoned him to help subdue the man, who was described as at least 6’4” tall and weighing more than 90kgs.

“Yes, she just said, ‘We need some big guys back there real quick’, and I ran back down there to see what was going on,” James told ABC’s “This Week”.

About three men were wrestling with the passenger. “So I proceeded to help out, hold him down,” he said. “And he was just — he was unbelievably strong. You know, he at least fought off three or four of us.

“So a doctor came by, gave him an injection, and then we tied him up with everything we could get our hands on, belts, just anything that could tie. ... But he was just unbelievably strong, almost possessed.”

A French passenger on the plane, Thierry Dugeon, said he realized something was wrong when he heard a woman shout from about 10 rows away, “I need help, I need help.”

“I jumped up and ran down and there were people there already wrestling with the bad guy. ... There were numerous passengers grabbing him. ... We grabbed his hands and tried to put him under control,” Dugeon said.

Dugeon said the man bit a flight attendant on the hand.

Tom Kinton, director of aviation at Logan, said on Saturday a flight attendant had approached the passenger when he lit a match during the flight.

Kinton said the man had been carrying “enough improvised explosives to do damage.”

SECURITY LAPSE?: In France, authorities launched investigations on how the man got through Charles de Gaulle airport security and on the suspect’s possible links to underground organizations in France and Europe.

—Reuters