Chadian troops seize hijacker of Sudanese plane
Jan 24, 2007 (N’DJAMENA) — Troops have seized an armed hijacker who forced a Sudanese airliner heading for the troubled Darfur region to land in the Chadian capital N’Djamena.
The Sudanese hijacker, who gave his name as Mohamed Abdelatif Mahamat, let all 95 passengers and eight crew on the Air West Boeing 737 leave the jetliner unharmed after it landed in Chad’s capital, then gave himself up Wednesday.
He later said he wanted to draw attention to the Darfur conflict and accused the Khartoum government of “exterminating the population” of the region in west Sudan swept by ethnic warfare and a humanitarian crisis since 2003.
The plane had left Sudan’s capital Khartoum for El-Fasher, the chief town of North Darfur state. The hijacker had a hand gun and a knife but did not resist arrest, a Chadian government source said.
The source, asking not to be named, said the gunman wanted the plane to be flown to Britain but when told there was insufficient fuel agreed to go to the capital of neighbouring Chad.
“The pressure we live under in Darfur forces us to seek freedom. Freedom is priceless and I left for freedom,” Mahamat told journalists at the headquarters of the National Security Agency, where he was led off for interrogation.
“I wanted to attract national and international opinion to what’s happening in Darfur,” he said, adding that he had “carried out an individual action” and wanted first to go to Rome and then Britain to seek asylum.
“I’m neither a rebel nor in the opposition, but the Sudanese government is exterminating the population by creating conflicts among different communities and saying that it’s just an internal, communal problem.”
Chad’s junior minister for infrastructure, Adoum Younomosmi, described the hijacker as a terrorist and said he would be tried.
“For Chad this man is a terrorist and he will answer for his acts to Chadian justice. Chad is not a sanctuary for terrorists,” Younomosmi said.
When the hijacked Boeing entered Chad’s airspace, French fighter jets based in N’Djamena escorted it to the capital’s airport, where it was surrounded by troops on the runway on landing at 9:30 am (0830 GMT).
Negotiations with the man started straight away and he gave himself up about 20 minutes later.
One Chadian official said Mahamat was close to Darfur’s rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), one of two main groups that launched an insurgency in the region on Sudan’s western border with Chad in February 2003.
The JEM consists mostly of fighters from the Zaghawa ethnic community, which lives both in Darfur and across the border in the east of Chad.
Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno is himself a Zaghawa.
The JEM has refused to sign a peace accord reached in May last year between Khartoum and one faction of the other main rebel force in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Movement.
According to the Sudanese news agency, SUNA, the plane was hijacked just after it took off from Khartoum heading for El-Fasher in North Darfur and Nyala in South Darfur.
The largest city in Sudan’s troubled west, El-Fasher is also the main base for African Union (AU) observers and has a large population of people displaced by the conflict, which the United Nations estimates has claimed 200,000 lives.
Some 230,000 refugees from Darfur have in the past four years taken shelter in camps in eastern Chad, which has seen renewed rebel insurgency and ethnic strife since late October 2006.
Since the Darfur conflict erupted, Khartoum has frequently accused Deby of backing the rebels, while N’Djamena levelled similar accusations at Sudan when the latest fighting broke out in east Chad.
(AFP)