Hijacker forces Egyptian jet to Cyprus in possible lovers’ tiff

An EgyptAir plane traveling from Alexandria to Cairo was hijacked and taken to Cyprus by a passenger threatening to blow himself up, Egyptian and Cypriot officials said Tuesday morning, though the case was ruled not terror amid a standoff on a Larnaca tarmac.

The motives for the hijacking were not immediately clear, but reports from various sources swirled that the man may have been seeking a reunion with an estranged wife, as the president of Cyprus said the case was not linked to terrorism, but domestic in nature. Another report indicated he was seeking the release of Egyptian prisoners.

The plane, EgyptAir flight MS181, landed in Larnaca, where the hijacker allowed most of the people on board to disembark, according to officials.

Egyptian Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy said negotiations were continuing, and four crew members and three foreign passengers remained on board.

He said the hijacker, who he refused to name, had not made any concrete demands and though security teams were unsure whether he actually had a bomb strapped to him, they were treating him as if he did.

Fathy said there had been 55 passengers on board the plane and that the hijacker had demanded it land in either Turkey or Cyprus.

“He had no gun or anything. We don’t know yet whether his (explosives) belt is real but for the safety of passengers we are dealing with it as real,” Fathy said.

Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades told reporters the incident appeared to be motivated by personal reasons.

“The hijacking is not terrorism-related,” he told a joint news conference with the visiting president of the European Parliament, Martin Schultz.

Asked about reports that the hijacker had demanded to see a Cypriot woman, Anastasiades said: “Always there is a woman.”

A government source earlier told AFP that the hijacker has an estranged Cypriot wife he has demanded to see and who is being brought to Larnaca airport.

The woman lives in the village of Oroklini not far from the airport, the source told AFP.

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However, an Egyptian government spokesman said the man wanted to go to Istanbul but was told by the captain that he did not have enough fuel for the journey.

The spokesman, Hossam al-Queish, also told the private CBC TV network that authorities could not confirm that the hijacker had explosives on him.

The hijacker was initially named as Egyptian professor Ibrahim Samaha, but a man matching that description told BBC news he was a passenger and not the hijacker.

Video shown on Cypriot TV showed lines of people calmly leaving the plane and boarding an airport bus. A flight attendant was seen stepping onto the stairs and then turning back into the plane.

An Egyptian civil aviation official said the hijacker had threatened to blow himself up with an explosive belt.

Israel scrambled its own jets in the immediate aftermath of the incident to secure the country’s airspace, an army spokesperson said.

“IDF planes were called up in light of the hijacking of an Egyptian plane to ensure Israeli airspace was not breached. When the plane landed in Cyprus, they returned to their base,” the spokesperson said.

Other reports indicated the hijacker may have been seeking asylum in Cyprus.

The plane was flying on a regular route when the hijacking took place, Egyptian officials said. The hijacker contacted the control tower at 8:30 a.m. local time and the plane was given permission to land at 8:50 a.m., Cyprus police said.

A tweet from EgyptAir said 81 people were on board. Earlier, a statement from the Egyptian aviation authority had said the flight was an Airbus with 55 passengers on board and five crew members.

The plane carried 21 foreigners, including eight Americans, four Dutch citizens, four Britons and a French citizen, an Egyptian civil aviation ministry statement said.

However, the director of the Alexandria airport, Hossni Hassan, said there were 26 foreigners on board, including eight Americans, four Britons, four Dutch, two Belgians, a French national, an Italian, two Greeks and one Syrian. He said three other foreigners could not be identified.

The discrepancy could not be immediately explained.

A Cypriot official told the Associated Press shortly after the plane landed in Cyprus that there were suspicions of a bomb on board the plane.

The official said there had been no demands other than that police vehicles move away from the aircraft.

Air travel security has become the subject of intense conversation since a bombing last week at an airport and metro station in Brussels killed 35 people.

Egypt has been battling jihadists linked to the Islamic State terror group in Sinai and along its border with Libya.

On October 31, a MetroJet plane from Sharm el-Sheikh to Russia crashed over the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board. Islamic State took responsibility for the crash, saying it blew up the plane.

Judah Ari Gross contributed to this report.