Iran guards foil plane hijack bid

Iranian aircraft security guards overwhelmed a man who tried to hijack a plane with two home-made bombs strapped to his body and who threatened to set fire to inflammable liquid he had poured over himself.

The official Irna news agency said yesterday armed guards, present on all Iranian flights, pounced on the man as he tried to enter the cockpit late on Saturday.

"Twenty minutes after take-off a man who had two home-made bombs strapped to his body doused himself in inflammable liquid and tried to reach the pilot with threats and intimidation," the agency quoted airports security chief Hossein Khaleqi as saying.

"The security guards pounced on the man after they tried to calm him psychologically," he said. The private Mahan Air plane, carrying 138 passengers from the southeastern city of Kerman, later landed safely at its destination, Tehran.

"The hijacker, aged 45 from Kerman, at the early stages of investigation, said economic problems were the motivation for the hijacking, but investigations are still continuing," Khaleqi said.

Iranian passenger planes have carried plain clothes Revolutionary Guards agents since a spate of hijackings in the 1980s by Iraq-based rebels. The agents foiled a hijack attempt on another domestic flight in November 2000.

A Revolutionary Court sentenced three hijackers to death and fifteen other people, most of them members of the same family, to prison terms ranging from 18 months to 10 years prison terms. The family had wanted to flee the country.