Cypriot ex-wife says Egyptian hijacker 'abusive, dangerous'

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — The Cypriot ex-wife of an Egyptian man who authorities say hijacked a domestic Egyptair flight and threatened to blow it up with a fake suicide belt said her former husband is an "extremely dangerous man" who used drugs, terrorized his family and beat her and their children.

Cypriot officials, who described Mustafa as "psychologically unstable," said he had asked police negotiators during Tuesday's hijacking to deliver a letter to Paraschou in which he demanded the release of 63 dissident women imprisoned in Egypt.

The couple divorced five years later and since then had only once made contact when she called him several years later to say that their teenage daughter — one of four children the couple had together — had been killed in a car accident.

Cyprus police told the AP that Mustafa's criminal record on the island stretched back to 1988, when he was convicted on six counts of forging passports and handed a suspended sentence.