Plane Hijackers Being Questioned

The prosecution has allowed three extra days to question the two men held for attempting to hijack an Atlas Jet plane on Saturday, 18 August.

The plane had taken off from Lefkosa, north Cyprus at 7.15 am, and the two men had attempted to take the plane to Teheran, Iran. When the pilots said they needed to refuel, the plane was taken to Antalya airport in the south of Turkey, where the hijackers eventually gave themselves up.

The two men have been named as Mehmet Resat Özlü, aged 27 and from Turkey, and Mommen Abdül Aziz, aged 25, a Palestinian with a Syrian passport.

They are being held at the Antalya Anti-Terrorist Police Department in order to investigate possible links with al-Qaida.

There had been 136 passengers and 6 crew members on the flight, which the two men had hijacked in order to "protest against the United States of America".

When the plane landed in Antalya, and the hijackers were allowing women and children to leave, many others managed to escape through a back door. The two pilots had left the cockpit immediately after landing, a decision which has been greeted with controversy.

One of the pilots, Faruk Cagimli, said in his statement to the Antalya Public Prosecutio that he had feared an attack like the September 11 attacks, in which flying planes had been used as bombs. The pilots had left the cockpit in order to prevent such a possibility. (EÖ/AG)