A quick-thinking pilot thwarted a gun-toting hijacker on a flight from Africa to Spain's Canary Islands by discreetly warning passengers he would brake hard upon landing, then speed up just as abruptly to knock the man off balance - and telling them to be ready to pounce, Spanish officials said Friday.
The trick worked to perfection, with travelers and crew waiting until the hijacker was on the floor to douse him in the face and chest with boiling water from a coffee machine and beat him into submission.
"The man deserves a medal," Air Mauritania spokesman Ahmedou Ahmedou said of the company's veteran pilot after the ordeal Thursday evening.
The lone gunman brandishing two pistols hijacked the Air Mauritania Boeing 737, carrying 71 passengers and a crew of eight, shortly after it took off from the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott for Gran Canaria, one of Spain's Canary Islands, with a stopover planned in Nouadhibou in northern Mauritania.
He wanted to divert the plane to France so that he could request political asylum, said Mohamed Ould Mohamed Cheikh, Mauritania's top police official.
The hijacker has been identified as Mohamed Abderraman, a 32-year-old Mauritanian, said an official with the Spanish Interior Ministry office on Tenerife, another of the islands in the Atlantic archipelago. He spoke under rules barring publication of his name. Mauritania has said the hijacker was a Moroccan from the Western Sahara.
The hijacker ordered the pilot to fly to France, but the crew told him there was not enough fuel. Morocco denied a request for the plane to land in the city of Djala in the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, so the pilot headed for Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, the original destination.
Speaking to the gunman during the hijacking, the pilot realized the man did not understand French. So he used the plane's public address system to warn the passengers in French of the ploy he was going to try: slam on the brakes upon landing, then accelerate 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 warned women and children to move to the back rows of the plane in preparation for the subterfuge, the official said.
It worked. As the plane landed on Gran Canaria, 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 in his face and at his chest, and some 10 people jumped on the man and beat him, the Spanish official said.
Around 20 people were slightly injured when the plane braked suddenly, the official said.
Spanish officials - and some passengers - had initially been concerned that the hijacking was terrorism-related; it came the day a trial began of 29 people accused of the 2004 Madrid train bombings.
"We were afraid. We thought it was people from al-Qaida or the Algerian GSPC who were going to cut our throats," said Aicha Mint Sidi, a 45-year-old woman who was on the plane. The GSPC is a Muslim extremist group.
"I trembled during and after the hijacking. I thought the plane was going to blow up any minute, either in mid-air or on landing," said another passenger, Dahi Ould Ali, 52. Both spoke after returning to Nouakchott.
The hijacker was arrested by Spanish police who boarded the plane after it landed at Gando airport, outside Las Palmas.
Air Mauritania identified the pilot as Ahmedou Mohamed Lemine, a 20-year-veteran of the company.
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Associated Press writers Daniel Woolls in Madrid, Spain and Ahmed Mohamed in Nouakchott, Mauritania contributed to this report.
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