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Wife of EgyptAir hijacker says her marriage to him was hell

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Wife of EgyptAir hijacker says her marriage to him was hell
The estranged ex-wife of the EgyptAir hijacker says her five year marriage to Seif Eldin Mustafa was a ‘living hell’ while also labeling him jobless and a drug addict.
In her first interview after the incident, Marina Paraschou, 51, who met Mustafa in 1983, when she was 18 years old, and married him two years later said there is no love story in their marriage saying the EgyptAir hijacker was a violent unemployed bully who was cruel to her and their four children.
She added ‘the world has painted a picture of a man who hijacked a plane for love’ but says it could not be further from the truth.
‘Most of the media painted a picture of a romantic situation in which a man was trying to reach out to his estranged wife,’ she told Cypriot newspaper Phileleftheros.
‘But that couldn’t be further from the truth and they would have a different opinion if they knew what he was really like.
‘It was a marriage of hell with threats, beatings, torture and fear. He was a man who knew how to inflict fear and to create misery around him. He was unbalanced and a scary person.’
Marina said during the seven years they spent together in her parent’s home in Cyrus, unemployed Mustafa could not provide for his family financially and the couple eventually divorced in 1990 when Mustafa left Cyprus for Egypt where he was jailed for forgery and fraud.
Mustafa later found his way out of prison in 2011 when he broke out with other prisoners during the uprising against Egyptian president Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak.

Ms Paraschou, from Oroklini, a village near Larnaca Airport, said called Mustafa, who was by then back in Egypt, to tell him one of their daughters had died in an accident.

‘I called him [to tell him of our daughter’s death] and all he could say was “What do I care?”.

‘I can assure you, he never cared about me or his children – both when he was in Cyprus and after he left. The only thing he gave was pain, unhappiness and fear.’

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