Two men and a woman, believed to be hostages released from the hijacked Afghan Boeing 727 airliner, are interviewed by police at Stansted airport. The five-day hijack ended peacefully just before dawn without casualties. The hijacking crisis aboard an Afghan airliner that had been stranded for days on a British tarmac ended peacefully this morning, with all the people aboard eventually filing off the plane.
Hostage crisis ends peacefully.
Police said the crisis was over, and that they would be interviewing all 160 passsengers and crew to determine what happened aboard the plane and who was responsible, but that their priority was tending to the passengers' health. Authorities said the motive of the hijacking is still unclear. But the British government is taking a hard stand on the situation. Home Secretary Jack Straw told parliament authorities will be closely examining and investigating any complicity on the part of the passengers with the hijackers. He said they will be treating the situation as a terrorist offense, looking at whether the hijacking was a ploy to get asylum.