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EgyptAir Hijacking Suspect Arrested in Cyprus After Standoff No One Hurt as EgyptAir Flight Is Forced to Cyprus in a Hijacking From the Heart
(about 3 hours later)
CAIRO — A man claiming to be wearing an explosive vest hijacked an EgyptAir plane on Tuesday morning, forced the pilot to land it in Cyprus, and then demanded that he be allowed to speak with his ex-wife, who lives there, before he finally surrendered to the authorities, officials said. CAIRO — Getting out of Egypt was never going to be easy for Seif Eldin Mustafa, a fugitive Egyptian convict who has been on the run since he escaped from prison five years ago. But on Tuesday, he resorted to extraordinary measures.
“It’s over,” the Cypriot Foreign Ministry announced at 2:41 p.m., after a standoff that lasted more than five hours, shutting down the country’s busiest airport and raising jitters about terrorism. Claiming to be wearing an explosive vest, Mr. Mustafa, 59, commandeered an EgyptAir passenger airliner en route to Cairo from Alexandria, forced it to divert to Cyprus, and set in motion a tense standoff lasting hours. He issued an incoherent set of demands that left officials alarmed, puzzled and touched before he gave himself up without hurting anyone.
Most of the 72 people on board were released after the flight was diverted en route to Cairo from Alexandria, but for several hours the plane stayed on the tarmac at Larnaca International Airport, on the southern coast of Cyprus, with the hijacker and seven or eight other people still on board. They were eventually freed — or escaped, in one case, by leaping from a cockpit window — and, shortly afterward, the hijacker surrendered. The Egyptian government sent a military plane to Cyprus to bring the passengers back home. Mr. Mustafa wanted female inmates released from Egyptian prisons. He demanded to speak with officials from the European Union, ostensibly to obtain political asylum there.
Cypriot and Egyptian officials identified the hijacking suspect as Seif Eldin Mustafa, an Egyptian citizen who used to live in Cyprus. He had told the pilot that he was wearing a suicide belt and threatened to detonate it. No explosives were found on the plane, the Cypriot police said. And he wanted to see his former wife, who lived in Cyprus.
Mr. Mustafa’s motivations were unclear, but they did not appear to be primarily political. Ioannis Kasoulides, the foreign minister of Cyprus, said that Mr. Mustafa had presented a letter calling for the release of female prisoners in Egypt and for a meeting with his ex-wife. As he talked with officials, he added to his confusing list of demands, but was increasingly incoherent, Mr. Kasoulides said. “Always, there is a woman,” the president of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, said in a brief moment of levity in the early stages of the crisis at Larnaca International Airport.
Mr. Mustafa’s ex-wife visited the airport and helped persuade him to surrender, the state broadcaster reported. She declined to talk to journalists on Tuesday. In the end, the crisis ended peacefully, only after confused scenes, including a hostage leaping from a cockpit window. Mr. Mustafa, who it turned out did not have explosives, walked off the plane with his hands up. The Foreign Ministry of Cyprus described him as “psychologically unstable.”
The initial, conflicting reports about the crisis from Egyptian officials — who for a time mistakenly identified another passenger as the hijacker — raised fresh questions about Egypt’s aviation security six months after a bomb brought down a Russian airliner in the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board. The drama came at a time of heightened global sensitivity among travelers after last week’s devastating Islamic State attacks on Brussels, which began at that city’s airport. And the timing could scarcely have been worse for Egypt, whose tourism industry has not recovered from a terrorist bombing in October that brought down a Russian plane, killing 224 people.
Apparently anticipating such criticism, Egypt’s Interior Ministry released images from surveillance video that appeared to show the hijacker walking through a metal detector and being searched at the airport before boarding the flight. That disaster, which has precipitated a currency crisis in recent months, has brought about a deep crisis of faith in Egypt’s ability to keep its airports and planes secure — fears that were briefly exacerbated early in Tuesday’s crisis when Egyptians officials identified the wrong man as the hijacker.
The passenger who had been mistakenly identified as the hijacker — Ibrahim Samaha, a professor of veterinary medicine from the University of Alexandria — later called the BBC and described what had unfolded. That man, a university professor named Ibrahim Samaha, called a BBC program to clarify that he was, in fact, a passenger on the hijacked plane — not the hijacker.
“We had no idea what was going on,” Mr. Samaha said of the flight. “After a while, we realized the altitude was getting higher, then we knew we were heading to Cyprus. At first the crew told us there was a problem with the plane, and only later did we know it was hijacked.” “We had no idea what was going on,” Mr. Samaha said of the flight. “After a while, we realized the altitude was getting higher, then we knew we were heading to Cyprus. At first, the crew told us there was a problem with the plane, and only later did we know it was hijacked.”
In a statement on its Facebook page, EgyptAir identified the flight as MS181 and said it had left Borg el-Arab Airport in Alexandria at 6:30 a.m. After some confusion about the number of people on board, officials said the plane was carrying 56 passengers; 15 EgyptAir employees, including seven crew members; and a security officer. Egyptian officials took pains to point out that Mr. Mustafa was not linked to the Islamic State. Apparently seeking to deflect criticism of their security procedures, officials released surveillance footage that showed Mr. Mustafa being frisked by security officials as he passed through a security gate before boarding the flight.
Hosni Hassan, a senior official at Borg el-Arab Airport, said by telephone that a majority of the passengers were Egyptian but that they also included citizens of seven other countries, including Belgium, Greece, Italy and the United States. In fact, Mr. Mustafa was a desperado of another kind. Egyptian security officials said he had been on the run since 2011, when he was among hundreds of people who escaped prison during the 18-day uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak. He had been imprisoned on multiple charges of forgery and fraud, the officials said.
Cypriot officials said the hijacker had initially demanded that the plane fly to Turkey but had then agreed to let it land in Cyprus, after pilots told him they did not have enough fuel for a longer flight. That meant Mr. Mustafa had been unable to leave Egypt to see his former wife, with whom he had lived in Cyprus until the 1990s. Moreover, his sense of confinement had been affecting him recently, neighbors at his home in an impoverished district of Helwan, south of Cairo, said Tuesday.  
Within a few hours of the plane’s landing at Larnaca International Airport, the crisis looked as if it might come to an early conclusion. One neighbor, Nagat Hassanan, said that a few days ago, she overheard Mr. Mustafa speaking on the telephone outside his ground floor, metal-gated home where he lives with a mentally disabled brother and a widowed sister. “He sounded frustrated and he was saying, ‘I really want to leave, but my passport is blacklisted,’ ” she said.
Video from the airport showed passengers walking down the stairs from the plane, an Airbus A320, and walking a short distance across the tarmac at Larnaca International Airport before boarding a bus. Many were walking calmly and carrying their luggage. Early Tuesday, Mr. Mustafa boarded EgyptAir Flight 181, from Alexandria to Cairo. Some 72 people were on board; about half were Egyptian, with the remainder from seven other countries, including Belgium, Greece, Italy and the United States, Egyptian officials said.
The president of Cyprus, Nikos Anastasiades, told reporters he believed the hijacking was not linked to terrorism. He and other Cypriot officials portrayed the hijacker as a psychologically disturbed man who had seized the plane in a bid to reunite with his ex-wife. “It’s all to do with a woman,” Mr. Anastasiades said. Mr. Mustafa looked uneasy, his fellow passengers said. After drinks were served, he pulled opened his jacket and showed flight attendants what he said was a suicide vest, and demanded to be taken to Greece, Cyprus or Turkey.
But then the crisis deepened as police officers at the Larnaca airport moved back news media crews and cleared nearby restaurants. Members of the security forces took positions around the airport, and snipers moved into place. The ultimatum was issued quietly, and the crew tried to reassure passengers who had seen it. “Don’t worry, we’re in it together,” one passenger, Muhammad Gouda, said he was told by an attendant. But most passengers knew nothing of the hijacking until they noticed that, instead of landing in Cairo, they were heading north across the Mediterranean.
Cypriot officials reported that Mr. Mustafa, as well as demanding to speak with his ex-wife, wanted the release of unspecified female prisoners from jail in Egypt — a demand that raised the prospect of a political aspect to his actions. Then Mr. Mustafa demanded to see the passports of all of the passengers, and he sorted them according to nationality.
After a tense few hours, as negotiators spoke with Mr. Mustafa, several hostages managed to leave the plane — three via an airport stairway and a fourth through a cockpit window. Live television pictures showed a man using a rope to climb out and onto the tarmac and then running to safety. At first, after the plane landed at Larnaca, it looked as if the crisis might be resolved quickly. After sending his demands to negotiators on a piece of paper, he allowed dozens of passengers to walk free, many carrying their luggage. To those who remained, he spoke of his desire to free female prisoners in Egypt and to “change the government in Egypt,” one passenger said.
A photo taken sometime during the episode aboard the plane showed one of its passengers, Ben Innes, smiling while posing next to Mr. Mustafa, who appears to be wearing an explosive belt. Mr. Innes reportedly sent the image to a friend before it was widely shared online. But alarmed Cypriot officials, noting what the foreign minister, Ioannis Kasoulides, called the “incoherent” nature of Mr. Mustafa’s demands, diverted all flights to Pahphos, the country’s second busiest airport, and deployed armed security personnel around Larnaca. Snipers moved into place.
Shortly after the passengers were able to exit the plane, Mr. Mustafa disembarked with his hands up. He was searched by two Cypriot officials and taken into custody. Inside the plane, at least seven hostages remained — crew members and five Western men selected by their passports: two Scotsmen, an Englishman, a Dutch businessman and one Italian. A surreal atmosphere took hold.
Cypriot news reports, citing local officials, said that Mr. Mustafa, 59, was a former Egyptian Army officer who had married a Cypriot, and that they had had five children, including a daughter who died in a car crash. He lived in Cyprus until 1994. One of the hostages, Huub Helthuis, the Dutch businessman, said he believed Mr. Mustafa posed a threat, but some of his fellow hostages did not.
The Egyptian authorities sent planes to pick up the freed passengers and return them to Egypt, where they were to be welcomed by Prime Minister Sherif Ismail. Cyprus-bound flights were being diverted to Paphos Airport, the country’s second-busiest airport, as the crisis unfolded, but by late afternoon, flights to Larnaca had resumed. Speaking at a Cairo airport, Mr. Helthuis shared a photograph from his phone that showed a fellow hostage, who he said was English, grinning as he posed beside Mr. Mustafa, still wearing the belt, inside the plane. The photograph, which Mr. Helthuis said he took, quickly became a sensation on social media and news sites around the world.
In a statement, the office of the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, expressed appreciation to Cyprus for resolving the crisis peacefully, which he said was a product of the “deep and distinct friendship between the two countries.” Mr. Sisi called Mr. Anastasiades to thank him. “Everything moved so quickly,” Mr. Helthuis said. “You couldn’t really think. It was hard to know how seriously to take him.”
Aviation security in Egypt has been under scrutiny since a Russian airliner crashed shortly after taking off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Oct. 31, killing all 224 on board. A local affiliate of the Islamic State said it had brought down that plane with a bomb. Russia and Egypt attributed the crash to terrorism, although an Egyptian-led investigation has yet to publish its findings. Outside, Mr. Mustafa’s former wife had arrived and helped officials persuade him to surrender. Cypriot officials said the former couple had five children, one a daughter who died in a car crash.
That crash dealt a crippling blow to Egypt’s tourism industry, a crucial source of foreign currency, and contributed to a 20 percent drop in the value of the Egyptian pound in recent months. Sharm el-Sheikh and other Red Sea resorts have been largely deserted this winter, with many hotels reporting occupancy rates as low as 5 percent. Then several of the remaining hostages fled, including one who climbed through a cockpit window, dropped onto the tarmac using a makeshift rope and sprinted to safety. Moments later, Mr. Mustafa emerged and surrendered. It was not clear at what point the authorities realized that he did not have explosives.
Sharm el-Sheikh is a popular destination for British tourists. The British government has given Egypt a list of 25 security improvements required in order for British flights to resume to the resort. “It’s over,” the Cypriot Foreign Ministry announced on Twitter at 2:41 p.m. 
But British officials say that senior government officials, including Prime Minister David Cameron, have been reluctant to authorize a resumption of flights. Applause erupted in a Cairo airport late Tuesday night as the exhausted passengers and crew finally emerged, many pushing their way through dozens of journalists and television cameras.
“He was crazy, just crazy,” said a teary flight attendant, clutching a rose, before being whisked off by relatives. Others said they just wanted to rest.
“We are cooked,” said Mohammed Zidan, one of the passengers. “We want to sleep.”
Mr. Mustafa was taken into custody in Cyprus and was expected to be formally charged on Wednesday. At his home in Helawan, where the streets are unpaved and littered with trash, neighbors said his actions were motivated by desperation and poverty more than politics.
“His family are just poor, helpless people,” said Suhair Hanafi, who runs a small store across the street from his home. “Just like everyone here.”