adminSTOCKHOLM. — A stowaway on a plane from Ethiopia survived the eight-hour journey in the cargo hold, where he was discovered yesterday, police said.
The man has applied for asylum in Sweden.
Duty officer Stefan Fardigs with the border police at Stockholm Arlanda Airport said baggage handlers discovered the man, born in 1991, when they were unloading an Ethiopian Airlines flight that arrived early on Friday.
They alerted police and an ambulance.
A medical check-up showed he was fine and the man said via an interpreter that he had hidden in the cargo hold at Addis Ababa’s Bole Airport, Fardigs told dpa. “He had a badge that showed he was an airport employee, which could explain how he managed to get onboard,” Fardigs said.
The stowaway, who said he was an Ethiopian national, was “despite the spectacular travel method treated as other asylum seekers”, he added.
He has been handed over to the Migration Agency that will process his application.
Fardigs said he was not suspected of any crime. — dpa.
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