A man in a wheelchair and his son used two grenades to hijack an airliner in Colombia yesterday but surrendered five hours later after allowing the crew and passengers to leave the plane.
The freed hostages told reporters the elder hijacker said he was partially paralysed by a police bullet during a drug raid some 14 years ago and had unsuccessfully sought compensation.
A senator who helped negotiate the standoff, said a $43,000 cheque was handed to the hijacker, but that the government would not honour it.
The airliner, believed to be carrying 20 passengers and five crew, had departed the southern city of Florencia when the two men commandeered it, said the Colombian Air Force.
The plane landed in Bogota, the flight's original destination, but at a military airfield next to the capital's civilian El Dorado Airport.
After speaking with government negotiators and a priest for hours while the twin-propeller plane stood on the tarmac, the two hostages surrendered and came down from the plane.
Shortly after landing in Bogota, the hijackers allowed women passengers and two babies to exit the plane and later allowed all the passengers off the aircraft.
Authorities said the wheelchair may have been used to smuggle the grenades aboard. The wheelchair was too large to pass through an airport metal detector, and the man was not patted down by security agents.