During World War I, his top achievement was setting up a naval blockade of Zonguldak coal fields, choking coal supply of the German-Turkish fleet.
AA is the first news agency in Turkey to employ a photojournalist holding a paragliding license and it is also the first that went 630 meters down below the surface in a coal mine in Zonguldak, Turkey, for photographing.
The hijackers were five Turkish nationals of Caucasian origin, Muhammed Emin Tokcan (b. 1969 in Gebze), Tuncer Özcan (b. 1968 in Düzce), Sedat Temiz, Erdinç Tekir (b. 1966 in Istanbul), Ertan Coşkun (b. 1960 in Zonguldak), Ceyhan Mollamehmetoğlu, an ethnic Abkhaz from Abkhazia, Khamzat Gitsba (b. 1971), and two Chechens, Ramazan Zubareyev (b. 1963) and Viskhan Abdurrahmanov (b. 1967).