Passengers Freed After Turkey Hijacking

A 20-year-old Turkish man reportedly distressed over family problems was arrested Saturday after hijacking a Turkish Airlines plane with more than 200 people aboard, officials said.

"All passengers are safe outside the airplane. That was our concern," Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou said at Athens airport.

Greek Deputy Transport Minister Manolis Stratakis said 20-year-old Turkish citizen Ozgur Gencarslan had been arrested.

"He was arrested. It appears he had some psychological problems. Another plane is on the way to collect the passengers. They said he was holding a razor and was strapped with explosives. But we haven't confirmed that yet," Stratakis said.

It was unclear if Gencarslan would be tried in Greece or returned to Turkey. Turkish Transportation Minister Binali Yildirim said the hijacker would be sent home.

Turkish authorities said the plane had 205 people aboard — 196 passengers and nine crew members — and had taken off from Istanbul for Ankara when it was hijacked 25 minutes after takeoff.

Greek anti-terrorist police earlier surrounded the Airbus A310 plane on the runway in Athens, and a top police official had been at the airport to negotiate with the hijacker.

According to Turkish police, Gencarslan hijacked the plane to reunite with his father, who lives in Germany, private NTV television said. He was reportedly depressed because his stepfather had barred him from seeing his mother and sister living in eastern Turkey, it added.

Turkish authorities earlier said the hijacker wanted to fly to Berlin and complained that his mother and sister were being kept "hostage."

"He has some family problems, we've used a fatherly and understanding approach to convince him," Yildirim said.

Authorities in Turkey said the hijacker had claimed to have explosives. But they noted that he was seen carrying five candlesticks as he boarded the plane and could have been pretending they were dynamite — as occurred in a previous hijacking in Istanbul in February.

Earlier, Turkish television broadcast interviews with passengers who spoke via mobile phones during the hijacking.

"The hostess told us that a male hijacker was in the cockpit, and said he had strapped bombs onto his body," a passenger who identified himself as Sami told private NTV television by phone from the plane.

After leaving Istanbul for Ankara, the plane at first diverted course and began heading toward the Aegean coastal city of Izmir, but later changed course again and began heading toward Greece, Turkey's private NTV television reported.

The Greek air force scrambled to get F-16 fighter jets to intercept the plane, but officials decided not to.

"Two hundred people are two hundred people. We would have prevented it coming to Athens, but they said they had no fuel and we couldn't risk it," Greek government spokesman Christos Protopapas said.

The plane was parked in a remote corner of Athens' new Eleftherios Venizelos Airport. The airport opened in 2001 as part of Greece's drive to modernize before the Olympic games in the Greek capital next year.

The Greek police have for months been training a special anti-terrorist squad to deal with hijackings and other terrorism at the airport as part of its preparations for the Olympics.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was also reportedly involved in negotiations, telephoning the hijacker and urging him to surrender, private CNN-Turk television reported.

The passengers were to be taken to a nearby airport hotel and were expected to return home on another Turkish Airlines plane.

Athens Airport spokeswoman Jennette Choisi said the airfield had resumed normal operations.

Although the hijacking did not seem to be politically motivated, there have been a number of such incidents in the past.

Kurdish, leftist and radical Islamic groups are active in Turkey and have carried out attacks in the past. Chechen militants have also carried out a series of hijackings and hostage-takings to protest Russia's military campaign in Chechnya.

The last hijacking at Istanbul's airport was in February, when a lone hijacker claiming to have dynamite sticks briefly held two flight attendants hostage before police stormed the aircraft. The police later said the so-called dynamite sticks were candles.