Cable briefs

Press, 30 June 1983, Page 10

Cable briefs

Hijacker jailed

A Sri Lankan hijacker, mobbed and cheered when he went on a spending spree with a SUS3OO,OOO ($458,950) ransom from Italy’s national airline, has been jailed for life. Sepala Ekanayake, who stayed in a top Colombo hotel and wined and dined for two days before being arrested, threatened to blow up an Alitalia Boeing 747 with 261 people on board in Bangkok last June. The High Court in Colombo also sentenced Ekanayake, aged 34, to three years hard labour, to run concurrently with the air piracy term, for keeping ?U5299,700 of the ransom. His lawyer said that he would appeal aginst the sentences. — Colombo. Five kidnapped Secessionist rebels in Sudan have abducted five foreign aid workers and are demanding international radio air time, a SUS6O,OOO ($91,600) ransom, and clothes in return for their release, according to informed sources in Nairobi. The rebels’ demands were given to Western embassies in

Nairobi by a British-born aid worker who was allowed to leave the Boma Game Park in southern Sudan where two Americans, one Canadian, a Dutchman and a West German were kidnapped by antiGovernment rebels late last week. — Nairobi. Politician killed A Right-wing Salvadorean politician was shot and killed in the latest incident of the growing violence in the capital of El Salvador. He was Rene Ibarrios Amaya, who was shot outside his home. — San Salvador. Boat disaster Thirty-four Ghanaians, mostly women, drowned on the Ivory Coast when a boat in which they were being deported caught fire and capsized, reports Accra Radio. The radio did not say when the accident took place. It said that 24 peple were rescued — nine were treated for severe burns in an Ivory Coast hospital. Survivors were quoted as telling Ghanaian authorities that a cigarette had caused the fire. — Accra.