VANCOUVER — The day before the suspected hijacking of a light aircraft triggered a security scare at Vancouver's airport this week, former commercial pilot Shaheer Cassim posted on social media that he was a "messenger of Allah" sent to save humanity from climate change.
A 39-year-old man with the same name has now been charged with hijacking, constituting terrorism, over the incident on Tuesday that saw Norad scramble F-15 fighter jets before the plane safely landed.
RCMP say the suspect had an "ideological motive" and allegedly seized control of the plane at Victoria International Airport after threatening a flight instructor, before flying to Vancouver.
B.C. Premier David Eby said when asked about the incident on Thursday that it was a "bizarre moment," and the fact that it ended without a more significant disruption at the airport is a "testament" to the skill of responders who talked the suspect down.
Images posted on social media of the arrest of the Cessna's pilot on the airport's north runway show a bearded man who resembles Cassim.
In his Facebook post on Monday, Cassim says he's the "Messiah sent to save humanity from climate change and usher in an era of world peace."
Cassim says in the post that he also goes by the name Sam Carana and runs the Arctic News blog. A Facebook account under the name and title has more than 4,000 followers.
Cassim warns in the post about "abrupt runaway global warming" that will cause humans to go extinct within a few years.
The Arctic News blog describes itself as a place where contributors "all share a deep concern about the way climate change is unfolding in the Arctic and the threat that this poses for the world at large."
The blog lists more than 30 contributors in addition to Carana, including several academics from prominent universities in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
His blog includes hundreds of posts since 2011, many of them highly technical, with the latest entry made on Saturday.
It is titled: "Will humans go extinct soon?"
Peter D. Carter, who founded the environmental website Climate Emergency Institute in 2009, is listed by the Arctic News as a contributor but said in an interview that neither he nor other contributors he knows have met Carana in person.
"He's a bit of a mystery," Carter said of the Carana.
He said he isn't sure if Cassim is Carana as the social media post indicates.
Carter, who is based in Victoria, said he has not sent anything to the blog for years.
The allegation that someone would hijack a plane in the name of climate change is "absolutely absurd," Carter said, but he hopes people can see past this for the urgent need to address the issue.
"Our problem is that there's next to no interest in climate change out there,"Carter said. "Over the years, recent years, the public interest in climate change has been dropping, dropping, and dropping."
In 2012, Cassim held a news conference before going on a cross-country bicycle ride to raise awareness for global warming.
His Facebook profile says he was employed from 2008 to 2010 by now-defunct KD Air, a small airline based on Vancouver Island.
The airline's former owners, Diana and Lars Banke, said in an interview that Cassim was one of the smartest and best pilots they ever worked with, calling him a fast learner who was highly intelligent.
But Lars Banke said Cassim left the airline after getting "bored" and then went to medical school. He also said Cassim believed the world was coming to an end.
Diana Banke said she was "very surprised" to hear of Cassim's charges, saying he was quite young when he worked for them and was "like a kid."
"Something would (have to) be going on that's not normal," Lars Banke said. "He was, I would say, a caring person."
Diana Banke said she remembered Cassim "doing a really long bicycle trek," and that he brought a dog along with him.
Lars Banke said he recalled that Cassim was somewhat interested in environmentalism, but he was unaware of any kind of religious beliefs.
"He never spoke religion with us," Diana Banke said.
Cassim's online posts include musings on religion, climate science, and advocacy for tolerance and peace, including a claim "the Angel Gabriel appeared before me and gave me a message from Allah."
"I'm really surprised that he would've done something like this," Diana Banke said.
His Facebook profile says Cassim attended high school in Lloydminster, Alta., before studying aviation at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 17, 2025.
Darryl Greer and Chuck Chiang, The Canadian Press
