Ex-wife of EgyptAir hijacker: ‘He’s extremely dangerous’

Hijacker Seif Eddin Mustafa is led away by police
Petros Karadjias/AP
Tom Marshall2 April 2016

The Cypriot ex-wife of an Egyptian man who authorities say admitted hijacking a domestic EgyptAir flight has said he is an "extremely dangerous man".

Marina Paraschou strongly rejected media reports suggesting that 59-year-old Seif Eddin Mustafa hijacked the Airbus A320 with 72 passengers and crew on board and threatened to blow it up with a fake suicide belt out of love for her.

In an interview published on Thursday in leading Cypriot daily Phileleftheros, Ms Paraschou claimed it was a "lie" that Mustafa asked to speak to her, and that police who brought her to Cyprus' main Larnaca airport where the plane was diverted only asked her to identify his voice.

Cypriot officials, who described Mustafa as "psychologically unstable", said he had asked police negotiators during Tuesday's hijacking to deliver a letter to Ms Paraschou in which he demanded the release of 63 dissident women imprisoned in Egypt.

The six-hour ordeal ended peacefully when police arrested Mustafa after all passengers and crew were released.

A crew member escapes from a window of the cockpit on board the Egyptair plane
Reuters

During a court hearing on Wednesday, a police prosecutor said Mustafa told authorities after his arrest: "What's someone supposed to do when he hasn't seen his wife and children in 24 years and the Egyptian government won't let him?"

But Ms Paraschou suggested in the interview that it was all a ruse.

She said: "This man never cared for his children for one minute, either when he lived here or when he went away.

"He only offered pain,and misery."

In a separate interview with daily Politis also published on Thursday, Ms Paraschou said Mustafa used her as an "excuse" to seek asylum in Cyprus.

Grinning selfie: Ben Innes, right, with Seif Eldin Mustafa

Ms Paraschou told Phileleftheros she married Mustafa in 1985 when she was 20.

The couple divorced five years later and since then had only once made contact when she called him several years later to say that their teenage daughter - one of four children the couple had together - had been killed in a car accident.

"What do I care? It doesn't matter she was killed," Ms Paraschou said Mustafa had told her.

She said while married, the couple lived in her parents' home and that Mustafa never held down a job.

Egypt's interior ministry said Mustafa had a long criminal record but had finished serving a one-year prison term in March 2015.

Cyprus police said that Mustafa's criminal record on the island stretched back to 1988, when he was convicted on six counts of forging passports and handed a suspended sentence.

He was later deported to Egypt.

He re-entered Cyprus on an assumed Qatari identity, but was tracked down and again deported to Egypt in 1990.

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