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EgyptAir hijacker's ex-wife says he is 'extremely dangerous' EgyptAir hijacker's ex-wife says he is 'extremely dangerous'
(about 5 hours later)
The Cypriot ex-wife of an Egyptian man who authorities say admitted to hijacking a domestic EgyptAir flight and threatened to blow it up with a fake suicide belt says her former husband is an “extremely dangerous man” who used drugs, terrorised his family and beat her and their children. The hijacking of an EgyptAir plane earlier this week was not the action of a man blinded by love but “a very dangerous” person prone to acts of domestic violence and drug abuse, his Cypriot ex-wife has said.
Marina Paraschou rejected media reports that 59-year-old Seif Eldin Mustafa hijacked the Airbus A320 with 72 passengers and crew onboard out of love for her. Speaking for the first time since her former husband donned a fake suicide belt and forced a flight to be diverted to Cyprus on Tuesday, the woman who unwittingly emerged as a central figure in the dramatic standoff said her marriage to Seif Eldin Mustafa had been “a black period” in her life marked by domestic abuse.
In an interview published on Thursday in the daily Phileleftheros, Paraschou said Mustafa never asked to speak to her and police only asked her to identify his voice. “Most of the media painted a picture of romance in which a man was trying to reach out to his estranged wife,” Marina Paraschou told Cyprus’s leading daily, Phileleftheros. “But that couldn’t be further from the truth and they would have a different opinion if they knew what he was really like. It was a very black period, full of threats, beating, torture and terror from a man who knew how to produce fear and spread unhappiness around him.”
Related: EgyptAir hijacking: from siege to surrenderRelated: EgyptAir hijacking: from siege to surrender
Paraschou said Mustafa was a “fanatical” Palestine Liberation Organisation supporter who bragged about participating in the killing of three Israeli soldiers and was jailed for four years in Syria. The Egyptian forced the Alexandria to Cairo flight to reroute to Cyprus after threatening to blow up the A320, apparently in an attempt to send a letter to Paraschou and claim asylum to reunite with his estranged family.
Paraschou said the last conversation she had with Mustafa since the couple divorced in 1990 took place a few years ago, following the death their daughter, one of four children. Paraschou said that when she called Mustafa to tell him, he responded: “And what do I care? I don’t mind that she died”. All 62 passengers and crew were ultimately released during a nailbiting, six-hour siege that saw Mustafa surrender and one of the British passengers, Ben Innes, become an unlikely internet sensation after posing for a smiling photograph of himself next to the hijacker on board the plane.
“This man never cared for his children for one minute, either when he lived here or when he went away,” Paraschou is quoted as saying. “He only offered pain, misery and terror. And even now when he’s in police custody, my children and I are afraid.” Innes’s mother, Pauline, scolded him for his “stupid” actions, telling him as he landed back at Manchester airport: “I don’t know why you did it”, reported the Sun.
Paraschou told Phileleftheros she married Mustafa in 1985 when she was 20. The couple divorced five years later. “The past two days have been crazy, unbelievable,” Innes told the paper. “But I’m here now and things can get back to normal. I’ll be relaxing at home with Mum.”
She said while married, the couple lived in her parents’ home and that Mustafa never held down a job, beating his children when he couldn’t support his drug habit. Paraschou, a law school graduate who had four children with Mustafa after marrying him in 1985 when she was 20 and he was 26, recounted how her former husband had disappeared for decades.
Egypt’s interior ministry said Mustafa had a long criminal record and had finished serving a one-year prison term in March 2015. Even when one of their three daughters died in a motorbike accident, she said, he failed to display any emotion or turn up for the funeral.
Cyprus police told AP that Mustafa’s criminal record on the island stretched back to 1988, when he was convicted on six counts of forging passports and handed a suspended sentence. He was later deported to Egypt following domestic violence charges by Paraschou. “For 25 years he never remembered that he had a wife and children,” she told Politis, another leading daily, in an interview published on Thursday. “Now he’s remembered?”
He re-entered Cyprus on an assumed Qatari identity, but was tracked down and again deported to Egypt in 1990. Mustafa, who has been remanded in custody, is likely to face charges ranging from hijacking, kidnapping and threat to commit violence.
Mustafa, who is currently being held in Cypriot custody, has told police he acted because he wanted to see his estranged wife and children, saying “what should one do?” Appearing before a court in Larnaca on Wednesday, he appeared in jocular mood, waving a victory sign to assembled journalists and telling an investigating magistrate that he had carried out the hijacking to be with his family. “What’s someone supposed to do when he hasn’t seen his wife and children in 24 years and the Egyptian government won’t let him?” the police prosecutor cited him as saying.
Mustafa surrendered on Tuesday after commandeering a domestic Alexandria-Cairo flight. A Larnaca court on Wednesday ordered him to be held in custody for eight days on suspicion of hijacking, abduction, threatening violence, terrorism-related offences and two counts related to possession of explosives. Egyptian officials, who announced they would be seeking his extradition, described him as having a long criminal record, saying he served a one-year prison sentence until March 2015.
The latter counts were connected to his claim of being strapped with explosives, even though the belt he wore is believed to be fake, a police source said. Paraschou, aged 51, denied she had participated in negotiations with him, saying she had been taken to the airport by police to identify him after the hijacker stunned authorities by handing them a letter addressed to her.
Egypt’s public prosecutor has asked Cypriot authorities to hand over Mustafa, Egyptian state television reported, but a Cyprus police spokesman and a government official have said any talk of extradition was premature. “Neither did I speak with him, nor do I want to speak with him,” she said, adding that he had never held a job and been a habitual drug user. “This man used my name only and simply as an excuse to come to Cyprus and ask for [political] asylum.”
Mustafa took charge of the early morning flight by showing what appeared to be a belt stuffed with plastic wires and a remote control, directing the flight to the holiday island. A Cyprus government spokesman said earlier this week that Mustafa had been deported three times from the island on charges of harassment and domestic violence.
All hostages were released unharmed after a six-hour standoff. The suspect allegedly commandeered the aircraft 15 minutes after takeoff from Alexandria. He approached a flight attendant and showed off the belt, attached to a remote control he held in his hand, investigating officer Andreas Lambrianou told the court. “He knew Cyprus well and lived here until 1994,” Nikos Christodoulides said. “After that he was deported three times on charges of harassing his wife. On at least one occasion he got back into the country using a fake passport.”
“The suspect asked all passengers and crew to hand in their passports, then gave two messages to a member of the crew, asking that the pilot be informed that he was a hijacker and wanted to land at an airport in Turkey, Greece or Cyprus, but preferably Cyprus,” Lambrianou said. The plane takeover, he insisted, had been the work of a “psychologically unstable man”.
“In a note, he stressed that if the airplane landed on Egyptian territory he would immediately blow the plane up.”