No terror link in Egyptair hijacking

The hijacking of an Egyptair flight yesterday was not the work of terrorists, and the belt the hijacker claimed was a suicide bomb was fake, it has been confirmed.

The man, identified by Egyptian state media as Seif Eldin Mustafa, was arrested after he gave himself up at Larnaca Airport on Tuesday. All the passengers and crew members on the aircraft were released without harm.

Mustafa had earlier hijacked Egyptair flight MS181 from Alexandria to Cairo and demanded the pilots fly to Cyprus. He said he was wearing an explosive belt.

The motive for the hijacking remains unclear. Mustafa had reportedly asked for a woman, a Cypriot national believed to be his ex-wife, to come to Larnaca Airport. Other reports suggested however, that he demanded the release of prisoners.

Cypriot officials were reported saying that the man had made a series of “incoherent demands” and that he was “psychologically unstable”.

But the fact that Mustafa was able to pass through Alexandria Airport with a fake suicide vest will raise further concerns about security at Egyptian airports. The crash of the Russian Metrojet flight in October 2015 is believed to have been caused by a bomb smuggled onboard the aircraft at Egypt’s Sharm El Sheikh Airport.

CCTV footage released by Egypt’s Interior Ministry showed Mustafa being frisked at two security checkpoints and passing a bag through x-ray machines. The BBC also reported however, that the suicide belt Mustafa was wearing was “bulging white… with wires sticking out”, which leads to questions about how it was not discovered.

But it will come as a relief to Egyptian authorities – and the 64 passengers and crew onboard the hijacked aircraft – that the incident was not terrorism-related. The country’s tourism industry has suffered a decline in tourism arrivals in recent years, from a peak of 14.7 million international arrivals in 2010 to an estimated 8.5 million in 2015. This included a sharp drop off in arrivals in November and December 2015, following the Metrojet crash.