Passengers tell of terror as co-pilot hijacks plane

One passenger says he was terrified "for hours" after the co-pilot of an Ethiopian Airlines jetliner locked the pilot out of the cockpit, commandeered the plane and headed for Geneva, where he asked for political asylum.

Passengers said it seemed like a routine overnight flight to Rome, until the jetliner went into a dive and oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling. A passenger says the hijacker threatened to crash the plane if the pilot didn't stop pounding on the locked door, trying to get back into the cockpit.

The plane was carrying 200 people, including seven crew members. Eleven Americans were among the passengers.Cont...

The co-pilot was taken into custody in Geneva, after leaving the cockpit through the window, using a rope. Swiss authorities say the hijacker is more likely to get prison time than asylum.

It's not clear why he chose Switzerland over the plane's original destination of Italy. Swiss voters recently demanded curbs on immigration. But Italy has a reputation among many Africans as not being hospitable to asylum seekers.

Ethiopia says it will seek the extradition of the hijacker.

With the airliner on the tarmac, an unarmed Hailemedhin made his exit via a cockpit window, without harming passengers or crew members, police spokesman Pierre Grangean said during a news conference.

“Just after landing, the co-pilot came out of the cockpit and ran to the police and said, ‘I’m the hijacker.’ He said he is not safe in his own country and wants asylum,” Grangean said.

The airliner could later be seen with a knotted yellow rope dangling from a cockpit window.

The opposition and rights campaigners in Ethiopia accuse the government of stifling dissent and torturing political detainees. But it is rare for state officials and employees — Ethiopian Airlines is run by the state — to seek asylum. The last senior official to do so fled to the United States in 2009.

Ethio­pian authorities said Hailemedhin had worked for Ethiopian Airlines for the past five years and had no criminal record.

“So far it was known that he was medically sane, until otherwise he is proven through the investigation, which is going on right now,” Redwan Hussein, spokesman for the Ethiopian government, said at a news conference.

He said Ethiopia may ask for Hailemedhin’s extradition.

Redwan said that among the 193 passengers on board the Boeing aircraft were 139 Italians, 11 American and four French nationals.

Flight ET702 departed Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, on Sunday evening and was bound for Rome. The plane was hijacked while over northern Italy, Grangean said. It landed at Geneva at 6:02 a.m.

He said the co-pilot, an Ethiopian born in 1983, locked the flight deck door when the pilot went to the toilet. He then asked to refuel at Geneva, landed the plane, climbed down an emergency exit rope from a cockpit window, and gave himself up.

Robert Deillon, chief executive of the airport, said air traffic controllers learned that the plane had been hijacked when the co-pilot keyed a distress code into the aircraft’s transponder.