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Co-pilot who hijacked Ethiopian plane threatened to crash it, passenger says - Fox News

Posted: 17 Feb 2014 08:48 AM PST

A passenger onboard an Ethiopian Airlines jet that was hijacked by a co-pilot – who guided the plane to Geneva instead of Rome – said the co-pilot threatened to crash the plane if the pilot kept trying to get back into the cockpit.

The Italian news agency ANSA quoted passenger Francesco Cuomo as saying the pilot was demanding that the hijacker open the door and tried to break it down without success.

Cuomo, 25, was quoted as saying the hijacker, speaking in poor English on a loudspeaker, threatened to crash the plane in response and then the oxygen masks came down.

The hijacker surrendered to police after landing in Switzerland and all passengers were safe. Police escorted the plane's passengers out one by one, their hands over their heads, from the taxied plane to waiting vehicles.

Urs Holderegger, a spokesman for the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation, confirmed that the plane landed in Geneva at approximately 6:05 a.m. local time Monday.

At a press conference, Geneva police said that the co-pilot had surrendered to police and requested asylum in Switzerland. Geneva airport chief executive Robert Deillon told reporters that the co-pilot was an Ethiopian man born in 1983, while Ethiopia's communications minister, Redwan Hussein, identified him as Hailemedhin Abera.

When the plane landed, police said the co-pilot used rope to exit through the cockpit window.

It wasn't immediately clear why the co-pilot wanted asylum. It also was unclear why he chose Switzerland which, unlike Italy, isn't a member of the 28-nation European Union and where voters recently demanded curbs on immigration.

Geneva prosecutor Olivier Jornot said Swiss federal authorities were investigating the hijacking and would press charges that could carry a prison sentence of up to 20 years.

The Geneva airport was briefly closed while authorities investigated the plane, but departures and arrivals have since resumed.

The plane first sent a distress message while flying over Sudan's airspace en route to Europe, according to Hussein.

"From Sudan all the way to Switzerland, the co-pilot took control of the plane," he said.

Two Italian fighter jets then were scrambled to accompany the plane.

Redwan said Abera worked for Ethiopian Airlines for five years. He said Ethiopia will ask for his extradition.

"His action represents a gross betrayal of trust that needlessly endangered the lives of the very passengers that a pilot is morally and professionally obliged to safeguard," Redwan said.

Passengers on the plane — 139 Italians, 11 Americans, 10 Ethiopians, five Nigerians and four French citizens, among others — were unaware at the time that it had been hijacked, officials said. Redwan said the plane was carrying 200 people including seven crew.

Swiss authorities at first thought the Ethiopian plane just wanted to land in Geneva for an emergency refueling before realizing it was being hijacked, Geneva police spokesman Eric Grandjean said.

Jornot said the hijacker's chances of winning asylum were slim.

"Technically there is no connection between asylum and the fact he committed a crime to come here," he said. "But I think his chances are not very high."

Both Italy and Switzerland, however, do not extradite those who may face the death penalty at home.

This is at least the second attempted hijacking in the past month. On February 7, a Ukrainian man attempted to hijack a Turkish passenger plane and fly it to Sochi, site of the Winter Olympics. The pilot instead flew the plane to Istanbul, and the man was taken into custody.

Ethiopian Airlines is owned by Ethiopia's government, which has faced persistent criticism over its rights record and alleged intolerance for political dissent.

Human Rights Watch says Ethiopia's human rights record "has sharply deteriorated" over the years. The rights group says authorities severely restrict basic rights of freedom of expression, association, and assembly.

The government has been accused of targeting journalists, and opposition members, as well as the country's minority Muslim community.

There have been numerous hijackings by Ethiopians, mostly fleeing unrest in the East African nation or avoiding return.

An Ethiopian man smuggled a pistol onto a plane and hijacked a Lufthansa flight going from Frankfurt to Addis Ababa in 1993. He demanded it be flown to the U.S. because he was denied a visa.

In 1996 a flight from Ethiopia to Ivory Coast via Kenya was seized by hijackers who then demanded to be flown to Australia. That flight ran out fuel and crashed off the island nation of Comoros, killing 125 people, according to the Aviation Safety Network.

In 2002 two passengers armed with small knives and an explosive device attempted to hijack a domestic flight but were shot and killed by in-flight security, the Aviation Safety Network reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

UN's North Korea report: Main findings - BBC News

Posted: 17 Feb 2014 08:39 AM PST

17 February 2014 Last updated at 11:11 ET

A United Nations panel has accused North Korea of crimes against humanity, including systematic extermination, torture, rape, forced abortions and starvation.

It is recommending prosecution of the country's top leaders by the International Criminal Court.

Below are extracts from the report, outlining its main findings.

Violations of freedom of thought, expression and religion

The commission finds that there is an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as of the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association.

The state operates an all-encompassing indoctrination machine that takes root from childhood to propagate an official personality cult and to manufacture absolute obedience to the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un.

Virtually all social activities undertaken by citizens of all ages are controlled by the Workers' Party of Korea. The state is able to dictate the daily lives of citizens through the associations run and overseen by the party. Citizens are obliged to be members of these associations.

People are denied the right to have access to information from independent sources: state-controlled media are the only permitted source of information in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Discrimination

It is a rigidly stratified society with entrenched patterns of discrimination... Discrimination is rooted in the songbun system, which classifies people on the basis of state-assigned social class and birth, and also includes consideration of political opinions and religion. Songbun intersects with gender-based discrimination, which is equally pervasive.

The songbun system used to be the most important factor in determining where individuals were allowed to live; what sort of accommodation they had; what occupations they were assigned to; whether they were effectively able to attend school, in particular university; how much food they received; and even whom they might marry.

This traditional discrimination under the songbun system was recently complicated by increasing marketisation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and by the influence of money, including foreign currency, on people's ability to have greater access to their economic, social and cultural rights.

Violations of the freedom of movement and residence

The systems of indoctrination and discrimination on the basis of social class are reinforced and safeguarded by a policy of isolating citizens from contact with each other and with the outside world, violating all aspects of the right to freedom of movement.

The state decides where citizens must live and work, violating their freedom of choice... This has created a socioeconomically and physically segregated society, where people considered politically loyal to the leadership can live and work in favourable locations, whereas families of persons who are considered politically suspect are relegated to marginalised areas.

The state imposes a virtually absolute ban on ordinary citizens travelling abroad, thereby violating their human right to leave the country.

Violations of the right to food and related aspects of the right to life

The state has used food as a means of control over the population. It has prioritised those whom the authorities believe to be crucial to maintaining the regime over those deemed expendable.

The state has practised discrimination with regard to access to and distribution of food based on the songbun system. In addition, it privileges certain parts of the country, such as Pyongyang, over others.

Even during the worst period of mass starvation, the state impeded the delivery of food aid by imposing conditions that were not based on humanitarian considerations.

While acknowledging the impact of factors beyond state control over the food situation, the commission finds that decisions, actions and omissions by the state and its leadership caused the death of at least hundreds of thousands of people and inflicted permanent physical and psychological injuries on those who survived.

While conditions have changed since the 1990s, hunger and malnutrition continue to be widespread. Deaths from starvation continue to be reported.

Arbitrary detention, torture, executions and prison camps

The police and security forces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea systematically employ violence and punishments that amount to gross human rights violations in order to create a climate of fear that pre-empts any challenge to the current system of government and to the ideology underpinning it. The institutions and officials involved are not held accountable. Impunity reigns.

The use of torture is an established feature of the interrogation process in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, especially in cases involving political crimes.

Persons who are found to have engaged in major political crimes are "disappeared", without trial or judicial order, to political prison camps (kwanliso).

In the political prison camps of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the inmate population has been gradually eliminated through deliberate starvation, forced labour, executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights enforced through punishment, forced abortion and infanticide. The commission estimates that hundreds of thousands of political prisoners have perished in these camps over the past five decades.

As a matter of state policy, the authorities carry out executions, with or without trial, publicly or secretly, in response to political and other crimes that are often not among the most serious crimes.

Abductions and enforced disappearances from other countries

Since 1950, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has engaged in the systematic abduction, denial of repatriation and subsequent enforced disappearance of persons from other countries on a large scale and as a matter of state policy.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea used its land, naval and intelligence forces to conduct abductions and arrests.

Family members abroad and foreign states wishing to exercise their right to provide diplomatic protection have been consistently denied information necessary to establish the fate and whereabouts of the victims.

Family members of the disappeared have been subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. They have been denied the right to effective remedies for human rights violations, including the right to the truth. Parents and disappeared children have been denied the right to family life.

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Isnin, 17 Februari 2014