Army deserter hijacked plane

The man who hijacked a Turkish plane today was an army deserter who had fled to Albania and was seeking political asylum.

Istanbul’s governor Muammer Guler said the Turkish Consulate in Tirana had alerted Turkish authorities earlier today that Ekinci – who wanted to to avoid military service – had been denied political asylum in Albania and was on his way to Turkey.

If Ekinci had arrived in Istanbul on the flight as scheduled he would have been detained for being a deserter, Guler said.

Ekinci, 28, had written to Pope Benedict in August to seek the pontiff’s help to avoid military service in Turkey, the state-owned Anatolia news agency reported.

Other Turkish news reports said Ekinci had also converted from Islam to Christianity.

Salvatore Sciacchitano, deputy director of Italy’s ENAC civil aviation agency, said the plane was carrying 107 passengers and six crew when it was hijacked.

A spokesman for the Greek military’s general staff said four Greek fighter jets had been scrambled to shadow the plane after it issued a distress signal over Greek airspace.

The plane’s captain issued an alert and was contacted by Greek air traffic controllers at 3.55pm Irish time 15 miles north of Thessaloniki.

The captain told the Greek controllers: “I have two undesirable people who want to go to Italy to see the Pope and give him a message,” Stravropoulos said.

The plane then contacted Italian air traffic controllers and asked to land in Brindisi.

Nicoletta Tomiselli, an ENAC spokeswoman, said the aircraft was escorted to the ground by two Italian military planes.

All the passengers were released unharmed and the hijacker surrendered to authorities.