Egyptair hijacker was abusive, boasted of killing Israelis — ex-wife

The man who hijacked an Egyptair flight on Tuesday and forced it to land in Cyprus was an abusive drug addict who boasted of killing three Israeli soldiers for a Palestinian terror group, his ex-wife said in an interview published Thursday.

Seif Eldin Mustafa, 59, seized a domestic EgyptAir flight with a fake bomb belt and forced it to land in Cyprus Tuesday, where he made a series of bizarre demands, including asking to meet his Cypriot ex-wife and releasing Egyptians prisoners.

He later surrendered and was taken into custody after releasing all passengers and crew unharmed following a strange hours-long standoff.

While many watching the hijacking unfold across the world saw his actions in a romantic light, ex-wife Marina Paraschou painted Mustafa as an uncaring killer, in an interview Thursday with the Cypriot news site Phileleftheros.

“Most of the media painted a picture of romance in which a man was trying to reach out to his estranged wife. But that couldn’t be further from the truth,” she said, adding, “They would have a different opinion if they knew what he was really like.”

Paraschou said Mustafa was a “fanatical” supporter of Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization, according to a translation by The Guardian. She said he had bragged about participating in the killing of three Israeli soldiers and spent four years in a Syrian jail.

She did not elaborate about the supposed killing of the Israeli soldiers but said Mustafa’s tattoos and some “items” she didn’t identify betrayed Mustafa’s “connections with dark things.”

Paraschou told Phileleftheros she married Mustafa in 1985 when she was 20. The couple divorced five years later and since then had only once made contact when she called him several years later to say that their teenage daughter — one of four children the couple had together — had been killed in a car accident.

“What do I care? It doesn’t matter she was killed,” Paraschou said Mustafa had told her.

She said while married, the couple lived in her parents’ home and that Mustafa never held down a job, beating his children when he couldn’t support his drug habit.

Paraschou called the marraige “the darkest period in my life.”

“It was a marriage of hell with threats, beatings, torture and fear. He was a man who knew how to inflict fear and to create misery around him. He was unbalanced and a scary person,” she said.

The two divorced in 1990 and Mustafa went to live in Egypt. Four years later, he was jailed for forgery and fraud. During the Egyptian revolution in 2011 against former dictator Hosni Mubarak, Mustafa took advantage of the chaos to break out of prison.

Cypriot officials, who described Mustafa as “psychologically unstable,” said he had asked police negotiators during Tuesday’s hijacking to deliver a letter to Paraschou in which he demanded the release of 63 dissident women imprisoned in Egypt. The six-hour ordeal ended peacefully when police arrested Mustafa after all passengers and crew were released.

Paraschou said it’s a “lie” that Mustafa asked to speak to her and that police who brought her to Cyprus’ main Larnaca airport where the plane was diverted only asked her to identify his voice.

During a court hearing Wednesday, a police prosecutor said Mustafa told authorities after his arrest, “What’s someone supposed to do when he hasn’t seen his wife and children in 24 years and the Egyptian government won’t let him?”

But Paraschou suggested in the interview that it was all a ruse.

“This man never cared for his children for one minute, either when he lived here or when he went away,” Paraschou is quoted as saying. “He only offered pain, misery and terror. And even now when he’s in police custody, my children and I are afraid.”

Cypriot police said Mustafa had not asked to be represented by a lawyer.

In a separate interview with daily Politis also published Thursday, Paraschou said Mustafa used her as an “excuse” to seek asylum in Cyprus.

Egypt’s interior ministry said Mustafa had a long criminal record but had finished serving a one-year prison term in March 2015.

Cyprus police told the AP that Mustafa’s criminal record on the island stretched back to 1988, when he was convicted on six counts of forging passports and handed a suspended sentence. He was later deported to Egypt following domestic violence charges by Paraschou.

He re-entered Cyprus on an assumed Qatari identity, but was tracked down and again deported to Egypt in 1990.

For at least some part of the hijacking, the Egyptian seems to have been cordial to his hostages. Benjamin Innes, a 26-year-old from Leeds, had a stewardess take a photo in which he can be seen standing and grinning next to the hijacker.

On Thursday, video emerged of that picture being taken, with several on the plane calmly talking and laughing.

https://youtu.be/emaIZScQiM4

According to the Daily Mail, Innes sent the photo to his friends over his phone’s WhatsApp app, writing, “You know your boy doesn’t f*** about. Turn on the news lad!!!”

Cypriot authorities are seeking the help of Interpol to determine how the suspect managed to pass the fake explosives belt through airport security in Egypt.

Agencies contributed to this report