/ 27 August 2008

Sudanese plane hijackers surrender

Hijackers of a Sudanese airliner surrendered to authorities in Libya after releasing all the passengers on Wednesday, Libya’s aviation authority said.

The airliner was seized on Tuesday after leaving Sudan’s war-battered Darfur region for Khartoum and landed at the remote Sahara desert oasis of Kufrah in south-eastern Libya.

Libya’s Civil Aviation Authority said 95 people had been on the Boeing 737/200. The hijackers first released the passengers and two crew members, but kept six crew members hostage while negotiations continued.

”The two hijackers were transported to one of the halls at Kufrah airport after giving themselves up,” Libyan state news agency Jana cited aviation authority head Mohamed Shlibek as saying.

He said no one was left on the plane after all the passengers and crew were released. There was no immediate word on the identity of the hijackers.

Shlibek said the hijackers had demanded for the plane to be refuelled to fly to Paris. Sudan’s Civil Aviation Authority said the two hijackers had demanded refugee status there.

The pilot had told Libyan authorities they were from a branch of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), a Darfur rebel group, and wanted to meet their leader, Abdel Wahed Mohammed al-Nur, in Paris, Jana said.

But al-Nur’s faction strongly denied the hijackers were its members.

Another SLM faction that signed a 2006 deal with Khartoum, which was rejected by al-Nur, said the passengers on the hijacked plane had included seven of its officers, three of them members of a transitional Darfur regional government.

Darfur has been riven by conflict since a rebellion against Khartoum’s rule broke out more than five years ago. International experts say more than 2,5-million Darfuris have been driven from their homes and 200 000 people killed. Sudan puts the death toll at about 10 000.

The insurgents are split into numerous factions.

The plane took off from the South Darfur capital, Nyala, bound for Khartoum. Libya granted permission for the plane to land after the pilot said it was running out of fuel, Libya’s state news agency said.

All the passengers were Sudanese except two Egyptian police officers, two Ethiopians and one Ugandan. — Reuters