Hijacker Surrenders in Tallinn

TALLINN, Estonia -- A former mine worker who seized a Russian plane carrying 70 people and made it land in Estonia surrendered to the authorities Thursday after releasing all his captives, officials said.


The man walked off the plane and was detained by Estonian police, ending a hijacking episode that began in the northern Russian region of Komi on Thursday morning.


Estonian and Russian officials identified the hijacker as Vladimir Bozhko, 36, a former mine locksmith from the northern Russian town of Vorkuta.


In Komi, security officials told Interfax that Bozhko has been treated for alcoholism and had left his job, working intermittently at various private companies since then.


The Komi Avia Tu-134 was hijacked while en route from the Komi capital of Syktyvkar to St. Petersburg, with a final destination in Minsk, Belarus.


Estonian officials said Bozhko was sitting on the plane with a 38-kilogram container by his legs. In a letter to the pilot, he threatened to blow up the plane unless his demands were met.


After forcing the plane to land in the Estonian capital of Tallinn for refueling, he demanded a flight crew that could fly internationally, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mari-Ann Rikken told reporters.


The hijacker asked to fly to Copenhagen, also reportedly naming Amsterdam, Helsinki or Stockholm as alternative destinations.


He released his captives, including 60 passengers and nine crew members, after Estonian authorities pretended that they were refueling the airplane, Rikken said.


It was not clear whether the container held gas or combustible liquid, but it apparently was taken on the plane as hand luggage, officials said.


The pilots said the plane smelled of acetone and gasoline.


"We smelled something and thought it was gasoline," said one passenger, Yury Vinogradov. He said most of the passengers were not aware that the plane was hijacked before landing in Tallinn.


"There was no panic and no fear," said Vinogradov, a scientist.


Toivo Klaar, an Estonian Foreign Ministry official who participated in the airport negotiations, said Bozhko had two accomplices who got off the plane with the rest of the passengers and were later detained. But other officials said he had acted alone.


"One hijacker's background as a miner doesn't indicate that they had political motivations," noted Klaar.


Rikken quoted crew members as saying Bozhko looked "dazed" and acted irrationally during the hijacking, and Itar-Tass said he was drunk.


Klaar criticized Russian air traffic security, adding that hijackings of Russian domestic flights might continue to affect Estonia "since we're right in the path of anybody who wants to get from Russia to the West in a hijacked plane."


Russia reportedly offered to send in special forces, but the Baltic nation declined. Tallinn's airport was closed and surrounded by about 100 army and Interior Ministry troops, including the K-Commandos crack unit.


Russia's Federal Counterintelligence Service spokesman Mikhail Kirilin praised "good work" by the Estonian special services and close cooperation between the two countries' diplomats and security agents during the incident.


Earlier Thursday, an official from Tajikistan's Defense Ministry tried to hijack a Russian passenger plane to Iran, but was knocked down and disarmed by a top police official who happened to be aboard.


The incident occurred on a Russian Tu-154 plane that had just left the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, on a flight to Moscow via Stavropol in southern Russia, Itar-Tass said.