DOHA, 18 April 2004 — A Kuwaiti who tried to force his way into the cockpit of a Qatar Airways flight was subdued and handed over to police when the pilot made an unscheduled stop in Cairo, but Egyptian authorities released the man after several hours of questioning.
A security source at Cairo airport said the authorities concluded that the man, Hamad Fahd Jassem, 30, had mental and nervous problems and did not mean any harm. “He did not intend to harm the passengers or the plane or divert the plane by force, so there is no need for us to detain him,” said the source.
Airline spokeswoman Salam Al-Shawa said earlier that the man tried to hijack the plane to Geneva but security sources in Cairo said he had nothing with which to threaten the crew. Egyptian authorities removed the passenger and his Kuwaiti companion from the plane, which was traveling from Casablanca in Morocco to the Qatari capital Doha with a stop in Tripoli, Libya.
After questioning Jassem in Cairo, he was examined by a doctor who quoted the man as saying that after taking off from Tripoli he felt he was choking and had to stand up to relax. “Then he felt movements coming on which he could not control, such as taking possessions away from the passengers and crew,” the doctor, Nehad Gamaleddin, said.
