NICOSIA, Cyprus (AFP) — A hijacker who seized an Egyptian airliner and forced it to land in Cyprus has been detained, officials said on Tuesday.

“The hijacker has just been arrested,” Cypriot government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides said on Twitter, without providing further details.

A man emerged from the aircraft and then walked across the tarmac with his hands up to two awaiting counter-terrorism police officers, an AFP correspondent reported.

They laid him on the ground and searched him for around two minutes before taking him away.

The hijacker had claimed to be wearing an explosives belt when he took over the plane.

He seized an Egyptian airliner and forced it to land in Cyprus on Tuesday, but nearly all of the passengers were quickly released and officials said the incident was not linked to terrorism.

A government source told AFP the hijacker had demanded to see a Cypriot woman, his estranged lover who lives on the island.

The EgyptAir plane landed at the airport in the southern coastal city of Larnaca at 8:50 am (0550 GMT), after the hijacker had contacted the control tower 20 minutes earlier to demand the diversion.

Egyptian civil aviation said he had threatened to detonate an explosives belt on the Airbus A-320, which had been headed from the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria to Cairo.

Most of the passengers were allowed to disembark after the plane landed. Egypt’s aviation minister Sherif Fathy told a press conference that the captain, a co-pilot, an air hostess and a security guard remained on board, along with three passengers.

EgyptAir had previously said that negotiations with the hijacker” had resulted in “the release of all the passengers, except the crew and four foreigners.”

The plane had been carrying 21 foreigners including eight Americans, four Dutch citizens, four Britons and a French citizen, an Egyptian civil aviation ministry statement said.

Fathy said there had been 55 passengers on board the plane and that the hijacker had demanded it land in either Turkey or Cyprus.