There is a lot of new information on the heroics of the crew and passengers who ended yesterday’s Air Mauritania hijacking-ordeal without tragedy. This should not be confused with the mis-information coming from officials who report that the hijacker “was seeking political asylum” — as if that makes it okay to hijack a plane full of passengers, including children and a pregnant woman, and hold a gun to a pilot’s head.

Mauritanian Air Boeing 373

From Reuters (Madrid):

“Passengers said they had been terrified when they realised [sic] their internal flight from the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott to the port of Nouadhibou had been seized. Passenger Jose Manuel told newspaper ABC that fellow travellers [sic], mostly Spaniards, had donned life jackets, thinking the plane was going to crash.

‘The plane has been hijacked! You should follow instructions. We are going to Dakhla (In Western Sahara),’ the hijacker announced from the cockpit soon after taking control, newspaper El Mundo reported passenger Mohamed Ahmed as saying.

The hijacker, who police said was a 32-year-old Mauritanian man, ordered passengers to the back of the plane and held a gun to the pilot’s head but one passenger managed to alert Spanish emergency services by mobile phone, media reported.”

Reuters also reports that, according to local police, the gunman was inside the cockpit when the plane landed in the Canary Islands. That as “armed police surrounded the Boeing 737 on the runway, five passengers and the co-pilot burst into the cockpit and knocked the hijacker to the ground before beating him up.”

The Associated Press has specific details on how the pilot orchestrated the dramatic and risky operation:

“Speaking to the gunman during the hijacking, the pilot realized the man did not speak French. So he used the plane’s public address system to warn the passengers in French of the ploy he was going to try: brake hard upon landing, then speed up abruptly. The idea was to catch the hijacker off balance, and have crew members and men sitting in the front rows of the plane jump on him, the Spanish official said.

The pilot also warned women and children to move to the back of the plane in preparation for the subterfuge, the official said.

It worked. The man was standing in the middle aisle when the pilot carried out his maneuver, and he fell to the floor, dropping one of his two 7mm pistols. Flight attendants then threw boiling water from a coffee machine in his face and at his chest, and some 10 people jumped on the man and beat him, the Spanish official said.”

The hijacker has been identified by Spanish Interior officials as 32-year-old Mohamed Abderraman of Mauritania. Mauritania says the hijacker is a Moroccan.

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