GERMANY: A man who stole an aircraft and threatened to crash it into the headquarters of the European Central Bank yesterday terrorised the inhabitants of Frankfurt for more than two hours before giving himself up to police.
Military jets and a police helicopter were scrambled after the pilot, at the controls of a small, single-engined plane, began circling over the skyscrapers of continental Europe's financial capital.
Two German air force jets roared back and forth across the darkening evening sky as the helicopter tried to force the aircraft away from the city.
In a call to the NTV news channel, the German-speaking pilot said he had no intention of harming anyone, but intended to commit suicide when his fuel ran out.
The main railway station and several high buildings in Frankfurt were evacuated by police, who also blocked off the city centre to traffic. The airport, one of the busiest in Europe, was closed and rail traffic was brought to a halt.
In Berlin, a government spokesman said the chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, was being kept informed of events at his home in Hanover.
A member of the control tower staff at Frankfurt's Rhine-Main airport said the pilot gave no indication of any terrorist motive. But, she said, he appeared to want to draw attention to one of the astronauts who died when the Challenger space shuttle exploded shortly after launch 17 years ago, on January 28th, 1986.
"I want to make my great idol, Judith Resnick, famous," he said during his call to NTV. "She was the first Jewish astronaut."
Resnick, from Maryland, was one of seven victims of the Challenger disaster. Her death was overshadowed by that of Christa McAuliffe, a teacher whose pupils watched horrified as her spacecraft exploded before them live on television.
The control tower spokeswoman said that, as yesterday's drama unfolded, attempts were made to contact Resnick's relatives in Baltimore.
The pilot told NTV that he had only enough fuel for a two-hour flight so, by his own account, he would have been within minutes of disaster when he finally touched down at Frankfurt airport.
A police spokesman said the man was arrested as soon as he left the plane. "He had a firearm on him and made an impression of being very confused."
The man made several threatening descents on skyscrapers in the city but his plane, a Dimona TC 80 modern motorised glider, was too small to do much damage to the facade of a building, police said.
It was the third time since September 11th, 2001, that a private aircraft had been used in an apparent copycat exercise.
On January 6th, 2002, a 15-year-old American, Charles Bishop, crashed a stolen plane into the Bank of America building in Tampa, Florida. He left a note expressing sympathy for Osama bin Laden.
Three months later a light aircraft was flown into the 26th storey of the Pirelli headquarters in Milan.
The pilot, Luigi Fasulo, and two women working in the building were killed.