Ben Innes, the British man who posed smiling for a photo with a hijacker on board an EgyptAir flight, is expected to return to the UK on Wednesday.
Innes, 26, was one of three passengers and four crew held to the end of a hostage siege after Seif Eldin Mustafa hijacked the EgyptAir flight bound for Cairo from Alexandria and forced it to be redirected to Cyprus. The explosives belt that Mustafa claimed to be wearing was later found to be fake.
Innes, originally from Leeds, is employed as a health and safety auditor by oil and gas waste management company TWMA based in Aberdeen but had been working in its Alexandria office before travelling home with a colleague. Innes used to work for Unilever and played rugby for York University while studying there.
A statement from his company said: “We have been in communication with both Ben and his family to support both throughout Tuesday’s events. We understand that all passengers and crew left the plane safely and we are very pleased to see the situation resolved.”
A spokeswoman for the British high commission in Larnaca, Cyprus, who has been inundated with interview requests for Innes since the photograph went viral, said: “I think he’s a bit overwhelmed.” Speaking to the Sun on Tuesday about the photo of him and Mustafa, Innes said: “I’m not sure why I did it, I just threw caution to the wind while trying to stay cheerful in the face of adversity. I figured if his bomb was real I’d nothing to lose anyway, so took a chance to get a closer look at it. “I got one of the cabin crew to translate for me and asked him if I could do a selfie with him. He just shrugged OK, so I stood by him and smiled for the camera while a stewardess did the snap. It has to be the best selfie ever.”
Innes was among the last passengers to be released by Mustafa, after the hijacker freed most of those on board. “After about half an hour at Larnaca I asked for a photo with him as we were sitting around waiting. I thought, why not? If he blows us all up it won’t matter anyway.”
On closer inspection, Innes suspected that Mustafa’s explosives device was likely to be fake. “So I decided to go back to my seat and plot my next move.”
Innes’ stunt was decried by security experts, praised by relatives, and said to be “totally in character” by friends.
“Only Ben could get a selfie! #proud,” reportedly tweeted Sarah Innes, a relative. Her account was later deleted.
The image has been widely described as a “selfie”, but Innes’ mother Pauline Innes argued that it was clear her son did not take the image himself.
“All we can say is that the picture is clearly not a selfie as everyone has been describing it,” she said. “You can clearly see that it is not Ben who is taking the picture. He’s in it but he’s not taking it.”
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