Hijacker found dead in French prison cell

The disturbed Italian man who tried to hijack a Bologna-Paris flight with a television remote control last month, was found hanged in his prison cell in Lyons yesterday.

His death – almost certainly suicide – came only three days after his French cellmate died in bizarre circumstances, after the two had been playing "Casper the Ghost" by placing plastic bags over their heads.

Stefano Savorani's death comes as a further embarrassment to French authorities after a series of suicides in custody, including that of Richard Durn, the man who killed eight town councillors in the western suburbs of Paris last March.

Although Savorani, 29, was in a secure psychiatric unit at the Saint-Paul-Saint-Joseph prison in Lyons and was under special surveillance, French officials said there had been no indication that he was suicidal. He was found hanging from a cord made of a shredded mattress cover.

"He was found hanged in his cell. He was alone. There is no doubt it was suicide," a French prison official said.

Savorani was a former policeman with a long history of mental illness. Having made several hijacking attempts – including one inside France – he tried to seize control of a Bologna-Paris Alitalia flight 10 days ago with a TV remote-control, which he said was linked to a bomb.

He claimed alternately to be hijacking the plane in the name of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network and then acting "against bin Laden". Savorani had since told French investigators that he hated Islam, supported a united Europe and feared humans would one day turn into UFOs.

His suicide came when the prison was investigating the death of Savorani's 35-year-old cellmate on Wednesday. The Italian apparently told guards that the two had been playing by placing plastic bags over their heads and almost suffocating one another.

French prison authorities are now likely to have to answer a series of awkward questions. How did two psychologically disturbed prisoners come to have such potentially lethal weapons as plastic bags in their cell, and why was Savorani not placed under closer watch after his cellmate's death? There has been a series of suicides in prison and police custody in France in recent years, most recently that of the multiple murderer Richard Durn, who jumped from an interrogation room in Paris police headquarters the day after killing eight councillors and wounding 19 others in an attack on the Nanterre council chamber last March.