Cairo (CNN) Farrah El Dibany thought something was odd. Her Tuesday EgyptAir flight was taking too long to get from Alexandria to Cairo, the plane was headed out over the Mediterranean Sea, and then, crew members began taking passengers' passports.
"When you fly to Cairo, you don't cross the sea," she said. "Then one of the cabin crew told us, 'We are hijacked. We're being hijacked.' There was a lot of panic and crying on the plane. They didn't tell us anything more. They didn't say what he wants or where we're heading, nothing. We were just kidnapped." El Dibany's flight had been hijacked by a man who officials described as "unstable" after he held the passengers and crew hostage with a fake explosive belt, forcing the plane to divert to Cyprus -- apparently over issues involving his ex-wife, a Cypriot. He also has a criminal record,
"It was very horrifying to be in this situation," El Dibany said.
The incident ended relatively peacefully Tuesday when the plane's crew and passengers left the aircraft and authorities took the hijacker into custody.
"The hijacker has just been arrested," Cyprus government spokesman Nikos Christodoulides said on Twitter, adding a few minutes later, "All passengers and crew are safe."
Cyprus state television showed video of the hijacker, wearing a white shirt, being led away by a phalanx of police. Presidential spokesman Alaa Yousuf identified the Egyptian man as Seif El Din Mustafa.
An early report that the hijacker was armed with explosives was false, said Alexandros Zinon, permanent secretary for the Cypriot Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Shortly before news of the arrest, video of the aircraft, which was parked on the tarmac at Cyprus' Larnaca International Airport, showed people leaving the plane, one through a cockpit window.
Domestic woes?
The incident began when Mustafa allegedly hijacked the EgyptAir flight because of his ex-wife, officials said Tuesday. The hijacking was not related to terrorism, a spokesman for the Cyprus Transport Ministry said.
The hijacker was "unstable," Homer Mavrommatis, director of the Cyprus Ministry of Foreign Affairs Crisis Management Center, told CNN. Egyptian authorities negotiated with him, but Mavrommatis said his motivation was not clear.
"He kept on changing his mind and asking for different things," Mavrommatis said.
Zinon also said the hijacker was unstable. One of his demands was that the plane be refueled so that he could travel to Istanbul, which was rejected, Zinon said. Authorities did, however, arrange for him to speak to his ex-wife, Mavrommatis said.
Mustafa is now being questioned by Cypriot authorities, who will levy charges against him, Zinon said. Cyprus has yet to receive an extradition request, he said.
This is not Mustafa's first brush with the law, Egypt's Interior Ministry said. The 58-year-old has a criminal record that includes "forgery, impersonation, burglary and drug dealing," the ministry said.
Mostafa was sentenced to one year in prison for forgery, and escaped in 2011, according to the statement. After additional legal procedures, his sentence for forgery resumed on January 5, 2014, and he was released almost exactly one year later.
The Airbus 320 was carrying 70 people: 55 passengers, including the hijacker, seven crew members and, because it was a connecting flight, an additional eight crew members, according to EgyptAir's Dina El Foly. Officials said earlier that as many as 82 people were on the plane.
Many of the passengers and crew were released during the early stages of the ordeal, Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry said.
'There was a bit of chaos'
El Dibany told CNN in a phone interview that crew members didn't explain at first why they were collecting passports, and the captain never gave an official explanation.
"They just said that there was a problem and, 'Please don't ask,' " she said.
After the cabin crew told passengers "in a very calm voice" that the plane had been hijacked, "some women started crying, and there was a bit of chaos."
No comments:
Post a Comment