Hijacked Ethiopian Jetliner Lands in Rome

An Ethiopian Airlines jet was hijacked Saturday shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa and began a fitful, daylong odyssey to Djibouti, Yemen and Egypt before landing early today in Rome.

Exhausted Egyptian officials who boarded the plane before it left Cairo shortly after midnight said the flight carried only a nine-member crew and four or five hijackers--all believed to be Ethiopians--when it took off from a deserted runway at Cairo International Airport.

Seventy-nine passengers originally on the flight, the third Ethiopian Airlines plane to be hijacked in the past year, were allowed to leave the plane after its first stop at Djibouti, the officials said.

Original reports that the hijackers were holding Britain’s ambassador to Yemen, Mark Marshall, were denied by the British Foreign Office, which said that Marshall was on vacation. Egyptian authorities said they did not believe the aircraft contained any passengers when it arrived in Cairo.

“They didn’t tell us anything. We don’t know what they wanted,” a senior Egyptian security official said. “They basically came just to refuel, then took off.”

Egyptian authorities originally had thought the aircraft contained a British official or some other passenger, the security official said, but they later discounted the idea. “ . . . To let all the passengers off and just keep one person, it’s not logical,” he said.

Hijackers of the Boeing 727, which took off Saturday from the Ethiopian capital, originally sought permission to land at Sana, the capital of Yemen, but diverted to Djibouti when Sana denied permission.

Yemeni officials then granted the plane permission to land at the southern port city of Aden in exchange for releasing the plane’s passengers in Djibouti. Though Egyptian officials said all the passengers had been released, Reuters news agency quoted Yemeni officials as saying only 66 of the 79 passengers had disembarked.

In Aden, the hijackers sought access to British and U.S. diplomats, according to news agency reports from Yemen. Two U.N. officials arrived at the airport with Yemen government officials to negotiate for the surrender of the hijackers, but the talks reached a deadlock when the hijackers refused to give themselves up except to U.S. or British officials, according to the reports.

Thirteen hours after arriving in Aden, the plane took off again, landing in Cairo after 6 p.m. when it ran short of fuel.

“We didn’t allow them in the beginning to land, but unfortunately they had to, because they had no fuel. We had no choice,” said an Egyptian official who talked with the hijackers.

The hijackers’ only demand in Cairo was for 35,000 liters of fuel. “As far as we know, it is an Ethiopian matter. It has nothing to do with us,” another Egyptian official said.

Raouf Himmi, deputy chairman of Cairo’s Airport Authority, told reporters: “We tried to get information out of them, but they refused. . . . Their only answer was, ‘We have some demands you cannot fulfill here in Cairo.’ ”

An official of the Ethiopian Embassy in Cairo spent several hours at the airport but left about an hour before the plane finally took off. He said he did not know what the hijackers were seeking.

In the hijacking of two previous Ethiopian planes--one in November in Djibouti and one in April in Kenya--the hijackers were former members of the security apparatus of deposed Ethiopian President Mengistu Haile Mariam.

Egyptian officials said they were unsure when the plane left whether it was headed for Rome, Athens or Tel Aviv, but the plane touched down at Rome’s Ciampino Airport, according to the airport tower there.