Men Surrender after Hijacking Turkish Plane
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – Two men who hijacked a Turkish passenger plane to protest against the U.S. surrendered to authorities Saturday after holding some crew members and passengers hostage for more than four hours. No one was hurt.
The men claimed to be carrying a bomb and demanded that the Atlasjet Airlines plane headed from northern Cyprus to Istanbul be diverted to Iran. The jet landed an hour after takeoff at Antalya airport in southwestern Turkey.
“The adventure that started early in the morning finally came to an end,” said Tuncay Doganer, the CEO of Atlasjet. “With the two hijackers having surrendered, the incident ended with no bloodshed.”
A Turkish official earlier said that the men were Iranian and were protesting against America. He didn’t elaborate.
