Unfortunate mad poet hijacks plane to attract attention to his work

A Russian man was arrested at the airport of St. Petersburg, who threatened to blow up an A-320 jetliner with 162 passengers on board. The 50-year-old resident of the Volgograd region of Russia got drunk on board and ordered the pilots to land the plane in Strasbourg. The passengers of the liner were forced to undress to their underwear when the plane landed in St. Petersburg because of the man’s trick.

The plane, which the man attempted to hijack, was flying from Turkey’s Antalya to St. Petersburg and was mainly carrying Russian tourists home from their holidays. Thirty minutes after the takeoff, the man, whose name has not been exposed, announced that he had a bomb. He delivered a written note to the pilots of the jetliner when the plane was flying over the Black Sea. Several passengers and crewmembers knocked the man down and tied him up. The explosion never occurred, and the plane continued its flight in accordance to the route.

The jetliner landed at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo-2 airport arriving ten minutes late. The police escorted the failed terrorist out of the plane. No weapons or explosives were found with the man.

Law-enforcement officers showed all the passengers of the Antalya-St. Petersburg plane to a room, where all of them were searched. The police asked everyone to undress to their underwear. They searched every suitcase, bag and even ripped children’s toys open. Nothing was found.

The man was later identified as Yashar Pasha-ogly, a writer and a poet, a native of Uzbekistan. It was not the first time when he attempted to attract the public attention to his own persona. He previously immolated himself, stripped down naked in front of the monument to Yury Dolgoruky and released disrespectful statements slandering the Turkish authorities. He was a patient of a mental home twice and even served a prison term in Turkey.

However, his previous lessons did not stop Yashar Pasha-ogly from going on another adventure.

The man made his most notable “artistic performance” in March 2005, when he threatened to set himself on fire on Moscow ’s Red Square . He urged the media to throw light on his sorrows, otherwise, as he said, he would throw light on Red Square with the fire of his own books and body. The self-immolation did not happen because the police quickly extinguished the fire on the unfortunate poet.

Itar-Tass photo