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Ex-cop again hijacks airplane©Associated PressNovember 28, 2002 LYON, France -- A man who hijacked a French jet in 1999 struck again Wednesday, threatening to blow up a flight over Switzerland with 57 passengers aboard, police said. He surrendered after the plane landed in southern France. No one was hurt. The man, identified by French police as Stefano Savorani, a former Italian policeman with a history of mental illness, claimed to be a member of the al-Qaida terrorist network and brandished a TV remote control he said was connected to a bomb, authorities said. The Alitalia flight landed safely after Savorani, 29, demanded it be diverted to Lyon, France's second-largest city, and that he be allowed to speak to journalists. Authorities said the hijacker released the passengers in two waves from the MD-80 jet, which had been flying from Bologna, Italy, to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Savorani surrendered to a French SWAT team and no explosives were found on board. In 1999, Savorani hijacked an Air France jetliner flying from Marseille to Paris with 76 passengers and forced it to detour to a different Paris airport, where he held a dozen people hostage for three hours. "Oh God, he's done it again," the Italian news agency ANSA quoted his mother, Orella Savorani, as saying. "I've been anxious for hours because he didn't come home at lunchtime." French police said Savorani was discharged from the Italian police in the late 1990s because of mental instability, and ANSA quoted his mother as saying he was in treatment for schizophrenia. French police said Savorani also commandeered an Italian train in 1998 with a toy gun, but no charges were pressed against him because of his mental illness. Authorities said they did not immediately know if he spent time in prison after the 1999 hijacking. Authorities said the plane was over Switzerland when the suspect stood up, waved the remote control and threatened to blow up the plane. According to police, the man declared: "I belong to an al-Qaida network, I want to make a declaration to the press." Moments after the plane landed, women and children scrambled from the plane, followed by a second wave of passengers, said the head of the airport police, Capt. Francis Ohling. Eventually, the crew emerged with a man wearing blue jeans and a pullover. "The fellow looked determined ... I took out my gun, I engaged it, I told him to lie down and we jumped on him," Ohling said.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
