A man who was among the passengers on the hijacked EgyptAir plane said that he was falsely accused as the perpetrator by Egyptian authorities.
On Tuesday Ibrahim Sahama was widely reported as the person who hijacked the plane and landed it in Cyprus. However that was later corrected.
Reuters/Yiannis Kourtoglou
A policeman stands guard at Larnaca Airport near a hijacked EgyptAir A320 , March 29, 2016.
Sahama told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme:
I was not the hijacker, I was simply a passenger on that plane and I was released alongside other passengers and had absolutely nothing to do with hijacking the plane. We did not know what was going on. We got on board the plane and we were surprised that the crew took all our passports, which is unusual for a domestic flight. After a while we realised the altitude was getting higher, then we knew we were heading to Cyprus. At first the crew told us there was a problem with the plane and only later did we know it was hijacked.
The EgyptAir flight MS181 set off from the coastal city of Alexandria and was due to land in Cairo before it was hijacked.
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