Authorities say a prison cell is more likely.
One passenger said yesterday the hijacker threatened to crash the plane if the pilot didn’t stop pounding on the locked door. Another said he was terrified “for hours” as the plane careened across the sky on Monday.
“It seemed like it was falling from the sky,” Italian Diego Carpelli, 45, said of the Boeing 767-300.
The jetliner, carrying 200 passengers and crew, took off from the Ethiopian capital on a flight to Milan and then Rome, but sent a distress message over Sudan that it had been hijacked, an Ethiopian official said.
Once the plane was over Europe, two Italian fighter jets and later French jets were scrambled to accompany it.
No one on the flight was injured and the hijacker was taken into custody after surrendering to Swiss police.
“The pilot went to the toilet and (the co-pilot) locked himself in the cockpit,” Geneva airport chief executive Robert Deillon said yesterday. He “wanted asylum in Switzerland”.
It was unclear why he chose Switzerland, where Swiss voters recently demanded curbs on immigration. However, Italy has a reputation among many Africans as not being hospitable to asylum-seekers.
Ethiopian Airlines is owned by Ethiopia’s government, which has faced persistent criticism over its rights record and its alleged intolerance of political dissent.
The co-pilot was identified as Hailemedhin Abera, 31, who had worked for the airline for five years and had no criminal record, said Ethiopian Communications Minister Redwan Hussein, adding his country would seek extradition. Geneva police said the co-pilot claimed he felt threatened at home.
“His action represents a gross betrayal of trust that needlessly endangered the lives of the very passengers that a pilot is morally and professionally obliged to safeguard,” Mr Redwan said.
Italian passenger Francesco Cuomo, 25, said he woke up soon after midnight when the plane started to “bounce”.
“The pilot was threatening (the hijacker) to open the cockpit door and tried to knock it down without succeeding,” he said.
“At this point, a message was transmitted by the loudspeakers in poor English, but the threat to crash the airplane was clearly understood.”
Oxygen masks dropped. Italian Paola Casale said: “We got scared because we saw these (oxygen masks) come down and the voice of the pilot, usually friendly and mellow, was cracking and worried, saying, ‘Breathe with the oxygen masks! Sit down!’ ... Then the plane fell sharply two times.”
Mr Cuomo told Corriere della Sera newspaper: “I thought that the co-pilot had gone nuts ... there was a lake below us, and so we suspected that we weren’t landing in Milan. I realised we weren’t in Italy any longer when I recognised the Alps. When we started circling above Geneva, we were really afraid.”
The co-pilot later threatened to take away passengers’ oxygen if they tried to leave their seats.
“’If you’re not sitting down and belted, I’ll take away your oxygen’,” passenger Serena Berti quoted the hijacker as saying.
On board were seven crew as well as 139 Italians, 11 Americans, 10 Ethiopians, five Nigerians and four French citizens.
Minutes after landing in Geneva, the co-pilot used a rope to climb out of the cockpit, then approached police deployed near the plane and “announced that he was himself the hijacker”, Mr Grandjean said.
Geneva prosecutor Olivier Jornot said the co-pilot would be charged with taking hostages, a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison in Switzerland. In Ethiopia, he could face up to 25 years in prison.
Mr Jornot said the hijacker’s chances of winning asylum were slim.
“Technically there is no connection between asylum and the fact he committed a crime to come here,” he said. “But I think his chances are not very high.”
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