Hijacker fell with a bump and into hot water
When he fell, flight attendants threw boiling water in his face, and about 10 people pounced on him, Spanish officials said yesterday.
The Air Mauritania Boeing 737 carrying 71 passengers and a crew of eight was hijacked by a lone gunman brandishing two pistols on Thursday evening shortly after it took off from Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, for Gran Canaria, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, with a planned stopover in Nouadhibou in northern Mauritania.
The hijacking alarmed Spanish officials because a trial of 29 people accused in the Madrid terrorist bombings of 2004 had begun the same day in Madrid. But the man’s motives were not terrorism; he wanted the plane to fly to France so he could request political asylum, said Mohamed Ould Mohamed Cheikh, Mauritania’s top police official.
“We were afraid. We thought it was people from al-Qaida or the Algerian GSPC who were going to cut our throats,” said Aicha Mint Sidi, a 45-year-old woman who was on the plane. The GSPC is a Muslim extremist group.
The hijacker ordered the pilot to fly to France, but the crew told him there was not enough fuel.
Along the way, speaking to the hijacker, the pilot realised the man did not speak French. So he used the plane’s public address system to warn the passengers in French of his ploy: brake hard upon landing, then speed up abruptly. The idea being to knock the hijacker off balance.
It worked. The man fell to the floor, dropping one of his pistols. Flight attendants then threw boiling water in his face and some 10 people jumped on the man and beat him, the Spanish official said.
The hijacker was then arrested by police at Gando airport, outside Las Palmas.
Ahmedou Mohamed Lemine, a 20-year-veteran of the company was identified as the heroic pilot.
