A Brazilian federal judge has remanded to prison the suspected leader of the four-member gang of South American nationals who hijacked the Trans Guyana Airways plane from Lethem on November 14 and was caught a week later.

Brazilian civil police caught the alleged hijacker and leader, Uruguayan Robert Golfarin Falero Mederos, 37, on November 20 while hiding in a bar.

He reportedly confessed to the police that a Peruvian had paid him US$4,000 and gave him 15 days to hijack the plane and take it from Guyana to Brazil.

He and three others hijacked the 13-seater Trans Guyana plane on November 14 with eight other passengers including Member of Parliament Shirley Melville, C&F proprietor Peter Fraser, World Bank officials James Droop and Keith McLean, a retired British army officer who was among three other visitors to Guyana and the pilot, Zaul Ramotar.

Ramotar flew the plane at gunpoint to Brazil and safely flew it back to Guyana after Mederos and his gang released him and the passengers.

No update was available on the fate of the three other hijackers, but the Brazilian police are still said to be on the search for them. The help of the Colombian and Venezuelan authorities have also been enlisted.

Mederos' account of the part he played in the hijacking was reported in the Brazilian newspaper Brasil Norte. It followed his apprehension in Boa Vista by the civil police one week after he and three others armed with guns hijacked the plane bound for Georgetown from Lethem. He is due to appear in federal court this week.

Stabroek News understands that under Brazilian law, the maximum penalty for hijacking is 15 years.

Mederos, who was convicted for trafficking in narcotics in 1993 in Portugal and spent seven years in jail was later deported to Uruguay. He travelled to Brazil as a tourist but stayed there for a while where he made the acquaintance of the Peruvian who masterminded the hijacking.

According to Brasil Norte, Mederos said that the Peruvian had paid him US$4,000 to travel to Roraima and then to Lethem to hijack the plane. However, he was not told the objective of the hijack mission except that he was to get the plane to the destination, which he indicated by using the plane's global positioning system. A Brazilian, a Colombian and a Venezuelan accompanied him.

The local police in a release had said that according to immigration documents at Lethem the other men were identified as two Colombians and a Brazilian. They had also given their names at the Takutu Guest House where they had overnighted on November 13 as Clovez Santos, Ramon Torres, Raimundo De Souza and Raimundo Pedro. Mederos, who is also fluent in English, as reported in the Brazilian newspaper, said that he was sorry about the hijacking of the plane but on the other hand his conscience was clear as no one had been harmed. However, he lamented that "it was a high-risk operation for nothing" and to crown it all "I was arrested."

Most of his account of the departure from Lethem tied in with reports from local and overseas passengers who were on board the hijacked aircraft. However, he said that he was very worried that no one had been waiting at the designated place and appointed time. His task, he said, was to get the plane there and he had accomplished that.

After circling the area and not making contact with the Peruvian who had contracted him, he told Brasil Norte, "we [the hijackers] resolved to let the passengers go." They had been bound and were released and told to "just go," he said.

After the plane left, he said that he and his colleagues were completely lost. They walked for four days through a forested area crossing rivers. Eventually they got to a place called Vila Brazil where they telephoned "the chief" and told him what had happened and asked for help to get out of the region.

Three men on motorcycles rescued them and took them to Boa Vista where he and the other men went their own way. He stayed in the district of Pintolandia in the suburbs where he was held by the civil police and subsequently handed over to the federal police.

According to Brasil Norte, the police who had been on Mederos' trail found him hiding below a mattress in a room of a building in the district of Pintolandia. He had earlier attempted to escape by scaling a fence to a neighbouring building.

Since the hijacking, the local aviation industry and the Guyana Government have been in discussions on increased security and a number of heightened security measures have been put in place by Trans Guyana Airways.