A deranged man who tried to hijack a passenger plane to Taiwan by holding an air stewardess at knifepoint was sentenced to four years in prison in southeast China, the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.
Sacked firefighter Pan Huaxing boarded a flight from his home city of Shenzhen to Xiamen on May 10 with two fruit knives hidden in his socks and a letter addressed to Taiwan leader Chen Shuibian urging reunification with the mainland, Xinhua
He rushed toward the plane's cockpit door and put a knife on the chest of a stewardess but was quickly overpowered by a steward and passengers, who seized his weapons and the letter, it said.
Medical experts concluded that Pan, who was also distressed about his dismissal from a Shenzhen firefighting squad, suffered from a ''slight mental aberration,'' it said.
A court in Xiamen imposed a lenient sentence because of his confused mental state and the limited harm he had caused, it said.
Another unemployed man who tried to hijack a passenger plane in April by threatening an air stewardess at knifepoint was later sentenced to 15 years in prison.
China suffered a rash of hijacks in the early 1990s, mostly by people demanding to go to Taiwan, but later tightened air safety. It took additional security measures after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
(China Daily Septembert 2, 2002)
