An Ethiopian man charged with hijacking an airliner with 104 people aboard was held without bail Friday after prosecutors said he had confided to the pilot that he had planned the crime "for a long time."
Nebiu Zewolde Demeke, 20, smiled broadly several times in U.S. District Court as he sat waiting for his first court appearance, a brief proceeding during which Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Roche maintained that Demeke posed a flight risk if released."It appears this hijacking was not a whim, but was carefully planned for a long time," Roche said. The prosecutor said the defendant had purchased a harmless starter's pistol, along with an "Indiana Jones"-style hat that he hid the gun in, long before the hijacking.
He surrendered to authorities in New York on Thursday afternoon after the plane, commandeered over Austria, landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport. He has requested asylum in the United States.
New details about the hijacking emerged with the release of an FBI complaint charging Demeke with aircraft piracy and threatening the flight crew aboard Lufthansa Flight 592. Air piracy carries a potential prison sentence of 20 years to life.
According to the complaint, Demeke threatened during a refueling stop in Hanover, Germany, to start killing flight attendants "one every five minutes," unless the refueling was speeded up.
The complaint said Demeke boarded the plane at Frankfurt International Airport and turned the Ethiopia-bound flight toward the United States because "he had been unable to enter the United States lawfully."
Roche said Demeke, who has a sister in Gettysburg, Pa., and brothers in Minnesota and Indiana, had never been to the United States before.
According to the complaint, Demeke commandeered the plane because "he had a number of personal and family problems which required his presence in the United States."
An Ethiopian citizen, Demeke had lived briefly in Morocco and in Germany since August, the FBI said.
Roche and the FBI said Demeke's mother lives in Morocco and his father, an economist, lives in Ethiopia. The prosecutor said he did not know much more about Demeke, except that he apparently had not had a job in some time.