Correction Post: Muslims Did Not Hijack The Turkish Airliner

Hamlet, The Hamhanded Hijacker Pausing To Ponder

Somehow, one Turkish "Christian pacifist" with no weapons was able to hijack a plane with 107 people aboard. And, what's amazing is those people weren't French. This must have been one tough-assed "Christian pacifist."


A man who hijacked a Turkish Airways plane flying from Tirana to Istanbul has surrendered after the Boeing 737 landed at Brindisi in southern Italy.

First reports suggested there were two hijackers, protesting against the Pope, but the one man now in custody is a Turkish army deserter seeking asylum.

Initial reports suggested that two hijackers had wanted to deliver a message to Pope Benedict, angry at his recent comments in a lecture in Germany which appeared to link Islam and violence. The pontiff is due to visit Turkey in November.

Hakan Ekinci is a conscientious objector who had run away to Albania during military service in the Turkish army, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford reports. He was seeking political asylum there, saying he had converted to Christianity eight years ago and could no longer be forced to serve in a Muslim army.

He charted his efforts to gain asylum in letters to a well-known Turkish pacifist group on the internet. According to his most recent letter posted last month, he believed his application for asylum had been refused and he was about to be forced to return home.

There is another letter from the same Hakan Ekinci on the Internet - this one an address to Pope Benedict, our correspondent adds. In it the soldier pleads with the Pope for help with his asylum claim as a Christian.

Again he says he has been forced to join the army against his will and claims he was imprisoned and ill-treated for refusing. The Turkish foreign ministry confirmed for the BBC that the hijacker, who is 28, was on the run from the army.

Ergun Ozkeseoglu, a passenger who phoned Turkish NTV television from the plane, said the hijacker had waved and apologised to applauding passengers as he left the plane. He had seen no weapons but had noticed a passenger repeatedly entering the cockpit and "and giving orders to the stewards".

Ermir Hoxha, a journalist who was also aboard, described one of the suspected hijackers for his television channel, Albania's Top-Channel TV. He said he had not seen any weapon.

"We gathered something was amiss when we saw a man wearing track-suit bottoms and a hat go to the cockpit door and pause there, thinking," he said.


So, can you imagine that? Here, we've got Hamlet, the hamhanded hijacker, pausing to ponder whether to be or not to be, before he proceeds into the cockpit, repeatedly, I might add, and

NO ONE FUCKING STOPPED HIM.

WTF?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention, in a development that I believe would be of interest to all of us here at Infidel Bloggers Alliance, it just so happened that Miss India was also on this flight.

Thank Krishna she survived, eh?