2 Turks hijack airliner carrying 113 people to protest pope's visit

BRINDISI, Italy -- Two Turks protesting Pope Benedict XVI's planned trip to Turkey next month hijacked a Turkish Airlines jet carrying 113 people from Albania to Istanbul on Tuesday, and it landed safely in this southern Italian coastal city, officials said.\nThe hijackers, who were unarmed, told authorities they were prepared to surrender, said Candan Karlitekin, chairman of Turkish Airlines' board of directors. He said no one aboard the Boeing 737-400 was injured.\nIstanbul Deputy Gov. Vedat Muftuoglu also said the hijackers had agreed to give themselves up.\nLights were out on the tarmac, and a fire truck carrying Brindisi airport's chief of security had pulled up near the jet.\nAlbanian lawmaker Sadri Abazi, who was aboard the plane, told News24 in Tirana, Albania in a brief cell phone call that his fellow passengers were shaken but safe.\n"Of course there is panic around, people are afraid, no information at all, but no one has been injured. They (the hijackers) are both at the pilots' cabin, and only one of them came out briefly," Abazi told the TV station.\nAsked about the hijacking, a Vatican official said he expected no changes in Benedict's plans for the visit. The official, who asked that his name not be used because of the sensitivity of the issue, said an official Vatican announcement that the trip would take place Nov. 28-Dec. 1 would be made soon.\nBenedict angered the Muslim world in a speech in Germany on Sept. 12, when he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor as saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."\nBenedict has expressed regret for offending Muslims by his remarks and said they did not reflect his personal views, but he has not offered a complete apology as some had sought.\nTurkish Airlines officials had spoken to Capt. Mursel Gokalp and co-pilot Yavuz Yilmaz, who told them the hijackers were not armed and that the passengers were not in any danger, said Ali Genc, a spokesman for the carrier.\nMuftuoglu said the hijackers stormed the cockpit about 15-20 minutes after takeoff from the Albanian capital of Tirana.\n"They told the pilots that they wanted to carry out an act to protest the pope and that they wanted the plane diverted to Rome and that they (the pilots) should not resist," he told Turkey's CNN-Turk television.\nKarlitekin said the hijackers declared that they would surrender "the moment they hijacked the plane," which carried 107 passengers and a crew of six. Most of the passengers were Albanians, Genc said.\nThe Turkish captain issued an alert that his plane was hijacked, and he was contacted by Greek air traffic controllers at 5:55 p.m. (10:55 a.m. EDT), 15 miles north of Thessaloniki, Greece, said Dimitris Stavropoulos, spokesman for Greece's Civil Aviation Authority.\nThe captain told the Greek controllers: "I have two undesirable people who want to go to Italy to see the pope and give him a message," according to Stavropoulos.\nThe plane later contacted Italian air traffic controllers and asked to land in Brindisi, and it was escorted to the ground by two Italian military jets, according to Nicoletta Tomiselli, a spokeswoman for the Italian air traffic agency ENAV.\nAssociated Press writers Suzan Fraser and Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara, Turkey, Derek Gatopoulos in Athens, Greece, and Maria Sanminiatelli in Rome contributed to this story.