Hijackers of Sudanese plane arrested

Libyan authorities arrested two hijackers of a Sudanese passenger jet, says the airline manager.

TRIPOLI, LIBYA // Libyan authorities arrested two hijackers of a Sudanese passenger jet today, the manager of the airline said. "The Libyan authorities have just arrested the two hijackers in the aeroplane," Mortada Hassan, the executive manager of Sudan's domestic Sun Air company, said. The airline was will send a plane to the military airport at Kufra in southern Libya to fly the passengers back to Sudan, he added. The hijackers, who took over a plane that took off from Sudan's Darfur region, were releasing passengers today after landing hours earlier at a remote desert airfield in southern Libya, a civil aviation official said. However, the official said earlier that crew members were not being allowed off the plane. Hijackers commandeered the Boeing 737 jetliner, which was carrying 95 passengers and crew, soon after it took off yesterday from Nyala in the south of Darfur, a vast region where Sudan's government has been battling rebels since 2003. The plane, which had been en route to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, was diverted to a World War II-era airstrip in Libya's Sahara desert oasis of Kufra. Libya's official JANA news agency said negotiations between Libyan civil aviation authorities and the hijackers resulted in the release of all passengers. The agency reported that there were 87 passengers and eight crew members. Earlier today, Kufra airport director, Khaled Sasiya, spoke to one of the hijackers, who demanded maps to fly to Paris and fuel for the plane, JANA reported. Mr Sasiya said the man, who identified himself as Yassin, told him that he and his fellow hijackers were from the Darfur rebel Sudan Liberation Movement led by Abdel Wahid Nur, according to the news agency's report. SLM-Nour spokesman, Yahia Bolad, denied any involvement, saying his group has "no relation to this act." Asked if French authorities could accept the hijackers arriving in France, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner told Europe-1 radio that he could "not say anything now. But we are considering everything so that the passengers, the 100 passengers, are protected." Mr Kouchner also said that rebel leader Abdel Wahid Nur, who lives in Paris, denied he was in contact with the hijackers. "He says he doesn't know these people and that he absolutely refuses to use such methods," Mr Kouchner said. "It's not his way. He's rather a peaceful man." The hijacked airliner belongs to a private company, Sun Air, the Sudanese civil aviation authority said in a statement carried by the Sudan Media Center, which has close links to the government. Among the passengers were former rebels who have become members of the Darfur Transitional Authority, an interim government body responsible for implementing a peace agreement reached in 2006 between the government and one of the rebel factions, a security official at Nyala airport said. There was conflicting information about the hijackers' identities and how many there were.

*AP and AFP