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Russian man accused of aircraft hijacking attempt arrested in Hrodna region

 

Belarusian authorities have notified Russia’s interior ministry that Sergei Kabalov, wanted in Russia for an alleged aircraft hijacking attempt, has been arrested in the Hrodna region.

“The transport police department of the Central Federal District has drawn up the necessary documents confirming that Mr. Kabalov is on a wanted list in order to enable the Belarusian side to start the extradition procedure,” the press office of the Russian interior ministry said in a statement.

According to Russian media reports, on January 11, 2013, while traveling aboard an airliner on a flight from Moscow to Egypt’s Hurghada together with his wife and three-year-old daughter, the 54-year-old Kabalov, a businessman resident in Saratov, engaged in disorderly conduct and tried to break into the cockpit. He punched a male passenger in the nose and beat up a flight attendant, shouting threats and obscenities, after the attendant told him to stop smoking and reported his behavior to the pilots. Being in a drunken state, he shouted that he was an officer of the Russian foreign military intelligence agency and that he “could kill anyone with two fingers.”

Upon landing in Hurghada, crew members reported Mr. Kabalov’s conduct to the local police, but he went unpunished. Russian authorities planned to arrest him after he returned from his vacation in Egypt, but he did not take the scheduled flight back.

As Viktar Byk, of the Hrodna regional police department, told reporters, Mr. Kabalov was arrested on the Minsk-Hrodna highway in the area of the village of Berahavy, near Hrodna. He was placed in a detention center in Hrodna pending a decision on his extradition. //BelaPAN