October 19, 1999
Web posted at: 8:38 p.m. EDT (0038 GMT)

HAMBURG, Germany (CNN) -- A hijacker who commandeered an Egyptian airliner over Turkey surrendered to police late Tuesday after the plane diverted to Germany to refuel.

The hijacker, reportedly armed with a knife, seized control of EgyptAir Flight 838 soon after it left Istanbul's Ataturk airport at 6:16 p.m. (1516 GMT), bound for Cairo, Egypt. The plane had 48 passengers and six crew members aboard, according to authorities in Cairo.

The man initially ordered the plane to fly to London, but agreed to land in Hamburg when told the Boeing 737-500 did not have enough fuel.

It took German authorities just 50 minutes to negotiate an end to the standoff. They persuaded the suspect to leave the plane by agreeing to review his request for asylum. The unidentified man, described only as Arabic-speaking, was taken into custody around 9:30 p.m. local time (1930 GMT).

Hamburg Police Chief Wolfgang Sielaff said the man will be charged with hijacking in Germany. Under German law, a criminal trial would proceed at the same time as the lengthy process to evaluate an asylum request.

The suspect wasn't under the influence of drugs or alcohol, Sielaff said. But he said the man "wasn't very structured" in what he was telling police.

The passengers, who were not injured, were taken by bus to the terminal, where they were questioned by police and given medical care. They were to spend the night in hotels, and EgyptAir was to provide a plane to take them to Cairo on Wednesday, airport officials said.

One of the co-pilots had earlier suffered a minor neck injury, police spokesman Hans-Juergen Petersen said. Cairo airport sources had said the cockpit crew resisted the hijacker and one co-pilot was injured. None of the passengers was hurt, police said.

A second person was briefly detained as he came off the plane, and later released when it became clear that he was not involved in the hijacking, Petersen said.

The motive and exact demands of the hijacker were unknown. He had reportedly ordered the plane take him to London. But an EgyptAir official said the pilot told the hijacker the plane did not have enough fuel.

Turkish Transport Minister Enis Oksuz said the plane was first refused permission to land in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Three planes have been hijacked in Turkey over the past year. Authorities claimed security was beefed up at airports as a result.

Security on EgyptAir, which flies daily from Istanbul to Cairo, includes sky marshals who routinely travel on its flights and assist with pre-boarding baggage checks. Private television NTV said two sky marshals were on the plane.

The marshals did not intervene during the hijacking, because according to "international norms, whenever there is a hijacking, the security people on the plane do not clash with the hijacker until the plane lands," Mohammed Fahim Rayan, chairman of EgyptAir, said in Cairo.

Berlin Bureau Chief Chris Burns, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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