Drunken Hijacker Overpowered By Passengers

A drunk man claiming to have a bomb tried to hijack a Russian-bound Turkish Airlines plane on Wednesday but fellow passengers quickly overpowered him, officials said.

Russian transport police detained him after the plane landed safely in St. Petersburg, prosecutor Alexander Bebenin told reporters at the city's Pulkovo airport.

Bebenin said the man had threatened to blow up the plane if his demands of diverting the flight to Strasbourg, France, were not met. Passengers overpowered him after he had handed a note to attendants with his demands, he said.

No explosives were found on the passenger or the plane, he said.

CBS News' Alexsei Kuznetsov, in Moscow, reports that Yeshar Rashidov, a native of Uzbekistan with a Russian passport, calmly fell asleep in his business class seat after the failed hijacking attempt. Further, Rashidov did not behave violently on the plane and did not resist arrest after it had landed.

If he is charged with, and convicted of a crime in Russia, Rashidov, who is in his mid-50s, could face a four-year prison term Kuznetsov reports.

Most of the 164 passengers aboard the flight were unaware of the hijack attempt and only found out on emerging from the plane after a two-hour wait on the tarmac, Bebenin said.

"We didn't see anything on board, and we knew nothing about the problems," said Aleftina, one of the passengers of the plane - who refused to give her last name - on leaving the airport.

"We realized that there was something wrong with our flight when we landed and they asked us to stay at our seats," she said, adding that passengers' belongings were searched.

The plane departed from Turkey's Mediterranean resort city of Antalya, a popular destination for Russian tourists.