Güncelleme Tarihi:
In a statement to police in Italy following his departure from the airplane, Ekinci said this:
"If there had been more Turks sitting in the front, I never would have done it"
"When I got on the plane, I saw that most of the passengers were Albanian. I saw only a few Turks. The Turks were all sitting separately from one another. If there had been 10-15 Turks sitting towards the front, I would have never attempted the hijacking. Because Turks are crazy...they would have immediatly brought me down."
Hakan Ekinci remains currently in Italy, where his immediate extradition to Turkey looks unlikely, as he is asking for political asylum, and as the Turkish Airlines flight was forced to land on Italian soil. In the meantime, Ekinci has told Italian authorities that he converted to Christianity, and that he fears for his life as a Christian in Turkey, a fact which looks likely to complicate matters even more for the legal procedure. Interestingly, Ekinci had a wide portfolio of recorded criminal activity in Turkey before this week's airplane hijacking.