05 April 2023 , 22:06
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Bungling FBI agents have broken into the wrong hotel room during a training exercise and arrested a Delta Air Lines pilot.
The agents were conducting a mock investigation and woke up the unfortunate pilot at 10pm on Tuesday April 4, 2023.
He was handcuffed and interrogated for 45 minutes before the officers realised a mistake had been made.
The pilot had been a guest at the Revere Hotel in Boston, US, where the training exercise was being held.
He woke up to open the door when agents started banging on it. Law enforcement barged in, handcuffed the pilot and put him in the shower.
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After 45 minutes they realised their mistake and apologised, reports CBS.
The pilot flies with Delta Airlines (AFP via Getty Images)In a statement released to the paper, the FBI said: "Based on inaccurate information, they were mistakenly sent to the wrong room and detained an individual, not the intended role player. Thankfully nobody was injured.
"The Boston Police Department was called and responded to the scene to confirm that this was indeed a training exercise."
Hotel staff were notified and they called local police.
Ambulance crews were called for the pilot but he refused treatment.
Scandals for the FBI are particularly embarrassing for the force.
In January former top FBI agent Charles McGonigal was charged over accusations he broke US sanctions on Russia.
He was accused of agreeing to help sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
Revere Hotel on Stuart Street, Boston, where the training exercise was being held (Google Streetview)McGonigal, 54, led the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York before retiring in 2018.
He has been charged alongside Sergey Shestakov, 69, a Court interpreter. US Attorney Damian Williams said that the two, as public servants, "should have known better".
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Williams continued: "This Office will continue to prosecute those who violate US sanctions enacted in response to Russian belligerence in Ukraine in order to line their own pockets.”
The two have been charged under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a US federal law which allows the President to impose sanctions on individuals in times of extraordinary threat to the US.
A national emergency was declared in relation to Ukraine in 2014 by then-President Barack Obama.
Since then a number of individuals have been added to the list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) and in 2018, so was Oleg Deripaska.
According to the US Treasury, Deripaska had acted on behalf of, directly or indirectly, a senior official of the Russian government and for operating in the Russian energy sector.
McGonigal and Shestakov are accused of investigating a rival Russian oligarch of Derpaska's in exchange for payments.
They are also accused of working on behalf of Deripaska to get the sanctions against Deripaska lifted.