Zubair Ali Ghias’s kidnapping claim caused a plane to be diverted to Bangor.

BANGOR (AP) – An investment banker whose alleged phone call to his Chicago home triggered the diversion of a Moroccan-bound jetliner to Bangor was charged Friday with making false statements to the FBI.

Zubair Ali Ghias, 27, who was removed from the plane before it resumed its flight to Casablanca, appeared Friday evening before a federal magistrate. He was ordered held without bail pending a detention hearing Monday in U.S. District Court.

The complaint alleged that Ghias falsely told the FBI that he had been kidnapped in Chicago and forced to travel to New York and board a plane to Morocco.

If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

FBI spokesman Ross Rice said there was no terrorist threat against the Royal Air Maroc flight, which took off from New York Thursday evening and landed in Bangor four hours later, at 11:16 p.m.

But Yolanda Clark, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, said her agency learned at about 10:30 p.m. of a bomb threat against the flight.

“We received a report that the Royal Air Maroc Flight 201, which departed John F. Kennedy Airport headed for Casablanca, was returning to JFK because a male passenger phoned his wife from the plane and stated he was going to blow it up,” Clark said. Officials later decided the plane should land in Bangor, she said.

The Boeing 767 resumed its flight shortly before 4 a.m. after passengers were rescreened and the plane was refueled, and it later landed safely in Casablanca. Eighty passengers and 10 crew continued the journey, officials said, and two men stayed behind in Maine to be questioned by federal authorities.

FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz identified one of the men as Ghias, who had been reported missing to Chicago police Monday.

Marcinkiewicz declined to comment on statements from a private investigator in Chicago who said he called the FBI after Ghias called his family using a fellow passenger’s cell phone to say he had been abducted by al-Qaida.

Ghias was cooperating with the continuing investigation, she said.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official identified the second man who was detained as Ahmed Bhiksi, a Moroccan who was in the process of being deported from the United States. Spokeswoman Paula Grenier would not say why Bhiksi was being deported.

He left the plane with the other passengers while Bangor police searched for a bomb, but he balked at getting back on, she said.

“He just refused to reboard the aircraft, so we took him into our custody,” Grenier said. “He is still in Maine.”

Bangor police Sgt. James Owens said the Ghias and Bhiksi were seated together on the plane, but Grenier said it was pure coincidence that the men were on the same flight.

“There are two different incidents here that were not related,” she said.

The private investigator, Ernie Rizzo, told The Associated Press that Ghias called his family from aboard the plane.

Rizzo quoted Ghias as telling his wife, “I’m on flight 201 to Morocco. I’ve been captured by al-Qaida, they want me to do something for them. I love you, I just gotta do this.”

Rizzo said Ghias made no mention of a bomb, and that the FBI questioned the family. His account could not be immediately confirmed.

Ghias’ wife, Jaheen Ara Ameen, filed a missing persons report on her husband with Chicago police on Monday.

Police said that Ghias was last seen by his wife, who is six months pregnant, on Saturday when he said he had to go to work that day in Chicago. Police found his Range Rover abandoned on the south side of Chicago on Tuesday.

In an affidavit filed with the federal court in Bangor, FBI Agent Wayne Hedrick quoted Ghias as saying he was kidnapped by an African man who got into his car and forced him to withdraw money from an ATM.

Ghias went on to describe how a group of Arabs then made threats against his family to force him to get a plane ticket to Morocco.

In a subsequent interview, Ghias admitted that he concocted the story of an abduction, Hedrick said. Ghias said he had fought with his wife Saturday and made “the rash decision to travel to New York and get away from everything,” the court document said.

Ghias expressed regret for the inconvenience he caused to his family and to authorities, suggesting that his actions may have stemmed from stress-related dementia, the agent said.

Ameen told reporters after she filed the missing person report that her husband picked her up at O’Hare International Airport Saturday morning with a car full of flowers for Valentine’s Day.

AP-ES-02-20-04 2124EST