Ukraine has launched a terror probe into a bid by an apparently drunk man to force an airliner flying to Turkey to land in Sochi where leaders gathered for the opening of the Winter Olympic Games.
"We have launched an investigation into an attempt to commit an act of terror and an attempt to hijack a plane," Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) investigative department chief Maxim Lenko told reporters on Saturday.
Lenko said the Ukrainian - reported by one official in Kiev as being "in an advanced state of drunkenness" - was opposed to the politics of President Viktor Yanukovych and his Russian counterpart and ally Vladimir Putin.
The Ukrainian investigator said the man on Friday demanded that the Istanbul-bound Boeing 737 jet be flown to Sochi where Yanukovych was holding crisis talks with Putin on the sidelines of the Games' opening ceremony.
The would-be hijacker "said the hands of Yanukovych and Putin were drenched in blood", said Lenko.
The investigator added that the man had also demanded the release of Ukrainian "hostages" - a reference to dozens of demonstrators detained by police during the sometimes violent anti-government rallies that have been rattling Kiev for more than two months.
Putin's high-stakes meeting with Yanukovych was expected to focus on the Ukrainian leader's determination to ignore the demands of pro-EU protesters and stick to an economic alliance with Kiev's historic master Moscow.
The Ukrainian man - identified by Turkish media as 45-year-old Atryom Kozlov - brandished what he said was a detonator as he tried gaining access to the cockpit of an aircraft operated by Turkey's Pegasus Airlines which left from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv with 110 people on board.
Turkey scrambled two F-16 jets to force down the airliner at Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen airport, where the man was immediately taken into custody and found to have neither a gun nor explosives.
Lenko said the man was tied up with rope by the crew after being tricked into believing that the plane's flight was being reversed toward Sochi.
"This was not something very serious," Turkish Transport Minister Lutfi Elvan told reporters in Istanbul.
"It was an act of a single individual" that was not linked to any terror network, he added.
Share
