Nationalitys or name. Ies or name. I prefer to speak to what i release because you will be surprised. What is the benefit of releasing the hijackers name . I request to you lets focus on the safety and wellbeing of the passengers. Let our professional negotiators take care of the situation as it goes. Any reports irresponsible reports about names nationalities are not in the best interest of what is taking place as we speak. What about the interrogation of workers at the airport . There is no doubt that investigations and interrogation will be initiated. In similar situation each security authorities will review and go through a checklist. This does not necessarily mean that we have a suspect and we are interrogating him. We have no further time to waste. Please one at a time. Will the craft be refueled and head to other airports or other destinations . This is not my decision. Negotiations are still underway and this will be decided as per the outcome of the negotiations. There are conflicting reports about foreign passengers on board. I have the specific names and list of nationalities, however, i will not disclose any information in this regard now i will make a statement in english. English. Can you say it again . [too low to hear] if you are talking about security procedure act at airport or Alexandria Airport we dont know yet how he got to what do we call it with the equipment he has and we dont know whether the equipment is true or real or not and this will come as an outcome of the investigation there after. But the reality is that we have a hijacker on board of a plane and not sure whether what he has is a true bomb or threat to the aircraft but we are dealing with it with effect because we cannot take any risk except dealing with it in a serious situation. We are dealing with a crisis. We should do and act as we should be. We have more important issues to attend. This is not the right time to ask about contracts. What is the latest . I released the number of passengers on board. Those released and those that are still kept as captives. I repeat myself i will not disclose the name of the hijacker or the names of the passengers or the nationalities. This is for the interest of the situation. So we have no solid information we can disclose and at the same time we are acting in the best interest of the safety and wellbeing of the passengers, those released and those still on board. Still we have initial reports. We do not have the right time to release this specific piece of information. I request to you once again we are in a crisis and addressing a crisis is totally different from addressing any other situation. In a similar case do you look at Airport Security and determine the e dpip shun tracker tracker the british extended their travel and can you reassure first with the egyptian and the hijacker and this guy did get on the planethe plane and look at the security . We have not seen reports so far and have not submitted a final report yet however the egyptian Airport Security has been audited by different authorities and our security teams were in very close contact with these authorities addressing the observation and findings they had so far we have been able to successfully rectify this however you may ask this question and i think its a good question but lets address this after we finalize the incident and after we make sure that our people are safe and after we investigate how this passenger was able to get whatever equipment he has on board. I cant make distinctions now because we have not completed the security investigation first. I appreciate that and can you give the account in english to the group here in arabic please and can you just go through that . Let me finish and i will do it in english, can we do that . Yes. How are the authorities dealing with the hijacker at the moment . We do not divulge these details but what is important is the craft has landed safely in cyprus and we are dealing with a crisis as we speak. Two more questions to go. As i said this piece of information, once it will be released timely we appreciate that many of the information you are releasing is classified and confidential however, there are reports that the name disclosed by other t. V. Stations of ibrahimsamaha is not the hijacker. Your question confirms my statement that we cannot release name as of now allow me please please. You did not disclose the name but the name is announced on other t. V. Stations worldwide. History has it that many people were were their names were smeared due to unconfirmed reports by responsible parties. Please let me complete my statement, i am here to release you the necessary pieces of information, the final solid pieces of information, names i will not disclose any names, nationalities either. What i want you to do mr. Minister, is to refute the reports about the name released the name of ibrahimsamaha and if i have solid information i will refute these reports and as i said, as we speak i cannot disclose any names or nationalities. The name of the hijacker will be released on timely fashion once we establish of the fact we will disclose the name. The captain was concerned and that is why he responded to the hijacker threats. However, he took the chances and flew to cyprus, however, he does not have enough fuel. I will answer your question however we will establish these facts once we are able to speak with the captain, the pilot of the craft and we will establish certain facts. Excuse me i have to conclude the press conference. We are going to release the information on timely fashion on the website of egypt air. And initial reports will be released released. We will be releasing the information as of now on timely fashion, thank you for coming on short notice. That was egyptian minister for the authority in cairo taking us through and separating clearly for us he would not be drawn on several key questions there as to what is going on you can see it taking place on real time at larnaca airport and had taken off at 6 30 local time and very quickly the hijacker demanded to either be taken to istanbul or cyprus and Laing Larnaca and the hijacker is not armed and not carrying a gun but they are not aware that the threat is unreal. And to interpret that particular sentence for you does that or does that not mean he is either wearing some sort of explosive device, a suicide vest or something that looks like an explosive device, there are seven people on board including the flight deck four passengers and remaining number of the crew. He also went on to tell us how the families of the passengers and hostages have all been contacted and he was very very firm in the fact he would not disclose the name of the hijacker. However, he did go so far as to say that the name that was out there on social media perhaps two hours ago is not correct. Stay with the pictures and talk to shaun a friend of al jazeera, an aviation commentator following this story on skype so shaun they are really playing this one by the numbers i guess. Absolutely. Its almost the standard thing and you hear the regulators on these occasions trying to persuade everyone not to ask questions, we will tell you when we have sufficient information. It never works im afraid to say, the modern information world doesnt work that way. I think a particular example of this was the Malaysia Airlines mh370 which is still missing and got different versions of the story from the officials at the beginning and here is one example and im looking at the statement made by egypt air. Now this is two hours ago and they said they would update it and as far as i know they have not but said the aircraft had already diverted to larnaca before it was hijacked and could be a translation thing but doesnt seem to make sense because it didnt have fuel to go to larnaca and its an example of the kind of things that can be misconstrued if you like on these occasions. Can you pick a course for us shaun, through what you think did or did not happen with this individual on this plane . I know im asking you to speculate for us but what do you think the narrative of this life situation is . Well on the basis that i could be proved wrong any time now it seems to me probable i put it higher than that that the flight deck door remained closed. The passenger i think we have seen a picture of him still in the passenger cabin, we have seen recently with the dreadful german wings crash and in many times it is impossible to breakdown a flight deck door unless someone opens it in the approved way so if we were to assume that the hijacker was still in the passenger cabin and not on the flight deck with the crew but was able to communicate with them through the interphone system on the aircraft the same system that the cabin crew used to talk to the flight deck crew that is sort of born out by the apparent fact that the aircraft never used the emergency what they call squawk as to say they set a particular code in the machine 7500 which tells air Traffic Control they are being hijacked and can with done without the knowledge of someone on the flight deck with them and did not use that as well and that would suggest that they were just talking normally with air Traffic Control saying look we have this chap on board and he is asking us to divert to larnaca and have just enough fuel to do that that is what we are going to do. So that seems to me at the moment the some of what we may be able to deduce from that but on the other hand one has to say we were listening to the minister just now and says please dont speculate and perhaps we shouldnt be doing that. Just looking at the other picture of aviation that we have been gleaning just over the past through months i mean this is a totally different situation to that russian metro jet and what happened to that one remembered i think it was six weeks ago now there was a flight took off, somebody was on board, i think it was in one of the horn of africa counties took off, there was an explosive device on board and punched a hole in the side of the aircraft and somebody was sucked out to their death, this situation is much better than those situations at the risk of stating the completely obvious because this situation is being controlled as far as you can control the situation it is being contained. Most of the people are off the plane safely. There are still people on board the aircraft obviously but have engaged in some sort of dialog with the hostage taker. Indeed and that is the way these things are supposed to go. Im not so sure its that much different though from the russian aircraft we dont know what brought that down in the desert there, having taken off from shamir shake and there was another example where someone was sucked out and dont know for sure if it was person involved in the explosion. Its having that they are saying at the moment there are seven people on board, that is the two flight deck crew. The passengers that are left obviously plus the hijacker and one person that they described as cabin crew but probably more likely to be the Security Officer but we dont know that either. Shaun we appreciate your insight thank you for your company here on al jazeera and talking here to an analyst. In the spectrum of egyptian News Conferences that News Conference felt incredibly open and felt as if, yes, we have a couple of ideas and a couple of areas we cannot talk about because its a live situation but what we know we will tell you what we know. Actually i like the performance of the minister of aviation. I mean it was professional. He showed a concern about the safety. I mean the safety of the passengers left on board was the top priority so yeah i liked his performance. But, again, i mean he confirmed what we said more than an hour ago in this studio that there is an air marshal on board so i was actually kind of suspicious if they missed if they if the air marshal missed that flight and just confirmed in what we said in the interview. Obviously when this kind of situation develops and evolves out there are people in back offices putting out News Conferences and there are people talking to reporters and maybe they get a little bit carried away with the heat and light of the situation, one quote though from one aspect one area of Egyptian Government saying and its a quote on my part he is not a terrorist he is an idiot. That is maybe the kind of thing you should say after the situation has been completely contained, completely diffused. He is not an idiot. He got past security. He got past the on board air marshal. Definitely. He has the worlds t. V. s cameras trained on the plane and he is, in fact, now in control of. Definitely he is not an idiot. He may be disordered imbalanced but definitely not an idiot and i dont know are you sure about this statement made by egyptian official . Well it is running around alongside lots of other statements percolating through. Whoever describes that person as an idiot after all he has done i think he is an idiot. Anybody who would call that person an idiot, no. He is an idiot. How does the Egyptian Government handle this when it comes to domestic consumption but also when it comes to that part of the world or that part of the world of tourism that might think to itself oh, i would love to go lie on a beach or go to cairo and actually i wont because there is a perception that egypt is a little bit more dangerous than it was even just six hours ago because of this . Well i believe that egypt is not as dangerous as they make it look like. I mean look at what happened a week ago when the ministry of interior came up with this silly story about a gang which abducts foreigners and steal their money. Its a silly story because it doesnt happen this way. Anybody who would abduct a foreigner or even a local he or they more likely to us for ran some they are out for money, they would ask for ransom rather than just stealing the money as little as there could be. So i mean those people i dont think they are concerned about the future of tourism in this country. I mean what they care about is just to give an impression to the world and especially certain part of the world which they seek and the support is there is an issue of terrorism in egypt and we are out there to deal with it. And so please just let us deal with it and let us stay in power but this is the issue. The point surely about that particular debate its not about how real or how big or how small, the real threat may be be it one quote idiot hijacker or someone who really wants to do something bad to a plane and take it out of the sky and kill hundreds of people this is all about perception im sure in a week or two weeks we will see the t. V. Reports and people cancelling holidays and cancelling flights and just yesterday we were reporting on the channel of an economic stimulus package being put in place because the economy and under mobarak its sad and now they say the economic is not flat lining but its going in the wrong direction. Definitely. This is the issue. I mean the regime in egypt is actually kind of a 22 situation, the regime wants to exist and to carry on in power, the people who are running the country and in order to carry on for the power in spite of all the violations and massive violations human rights and everything we have to give a pretext, an excuse to the world, we are doing this to Counter Terrorism so we have to export this image which is actually damaging the economy at the same time. So which is which . I mean which comes before or on top of their priorities to carry on to be in power or to support the economy, to reform the economy . Its a question that we have to answer. For the moment thank you so much you are watching al jazeera and continuing coverage of what is going on on the ground there at larnaca airport, four people held hostage along with remaining members of the crew on the egypt a320 hijacked from its original position to cyprus and do stay with us more to come. And on the streets. Theres been another teenager shot and killed by the police. A fault lines special investigation. Theres a general distrust of this prosecutor. This is a target you cant get rid of. The untold story of whats really going on in ferguson. They were so angry, because it couldve been them. One hour special, only on al jazeera america. Coming up tonight well have the latest. Does the government give you Refugee Status . Theyve marched to the border. Thousands have taken to the streets here in protest. This is where gangs bury their members. Theyre tracking climate change. This is al jazeera. Hell oel. Welcome. Youre watching the hello. Welcome. Youre watching the al jazeera news hour. Coming up an aeroplane has been highjacked in cyprus new laws come into force in japan allowing soldiers to fight overseas for the First Time Since world war 2
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