Passengers who were freed from a hijacked Air Mauritania Boeing 737 passenger plane are transported in a bus after it landed at Gando airport in Las Palmas on the island of Gran Canaria in Spain's Canary Islands yesterday. Spain's interior ministry said security forces had arrested the hijacker, thought to be from North Africa, and freed all 71 passengers and eight crew after it touched down. - Reuters

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Canary Islands (AP):

A quick-thinking pilot thwarted a gun-toting hijacker on a flight from Africa to Spain's Canary Islands by discreetly warning passengers he would brake hard upon landing, then speed up just as abruptly to knock the man off balance - and telling them to be ready to pounce, Spanish officials said Friday.

The trick worked to perfection, with travellers and crew waiting until the hijacker was on the floor to douse him in the face and chest with boiling water from a coffee machine and beat him into submission.

"The man deserves a medal," Air Mauritania spokesman Ahmedou Ahmedou said of the company's veteran pilot after the ordeal Thursday evening.

The lone gunman brandishing two pistols hijacked the Air Mauritania Boeing 737, carrying 71 passengers and a crew of eight, shortly after it took off from the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott for Gran Canaria, one of Spain's Canary Islands, with a stopover planned in Nouadhibou in northern Mauritania.

SEEKING ASYLUM

He wanted to divert the plane to France so that he could request political asylum, said Mohamed Ould Mohamed Cheikh, Mauritania's top police official.

The hijacker has been identified as Mohamed Abderraman, a 32-year-old Mauritanian, said an official with the Spanish Interior Ministry office on Tenerife, another of the islands in the Atlantic archipelago.

He spoke under rules barring publication of his name.

Mauritania has said the hijacker was a Moroccan from the Western Sahara.