A British man has shot to fame after clicking “the selfie of a life time” with the hijacker of the EgyptAir jet during the hostage drama in Cyprus, an act he said was aimed at staying “cheerful” and having a “closer look” at his ‘suicide belt’.
Benjamin Innes was one of the last captives to be released by Seif al-Din Mustafa during yesterday’s six-hour hijacking episode and took a picture with the man who claimed to be wearing a suicide vest.
A photograph shows Innes grinning broadly as he stands next to Mustafa in the cabin of the hijacked Airbus 320 as it sat on the runway of Cyprus’s larnaca airport. He was one eight Britons reported to be on plane. Innes, 26, was rapped by security experts last night for risking passengers’ lives with his astonishing hijack photo.
Innes was among the 62 people on board an EgyptAir flight from Alexandria to Cairo on Tuesday when Mustafa seized control and threatened to detonate a bomb belt. Mustafa forced the Airbus A320 to land in larnaca, Cyprus.
Innes took his chance to take “the selfie of a lifetime” during the deadlock, which saw the jet surrounded by heavily armed troops. The health and safety auditor from leeds said, “I’m not sure why I did it, I just threw caution to the wind while trying to stay cheerful in the face of adversity. I figured if his bomb was real I’d nothing to lose anyway. So took a chance to get a closer look at it.”