There is a video on the social media posted by مقاطع درناويه صح which shows passengers on the hijacked Afriqiyah Airlines plane, singing and clapping. See https://www.facebook.com/video.derna/videos/1300771493319852/

It is a scene to which we readily empathise: that of a group of friends on a traditional xalata, from the time when private buses were in off white, had windows that could be opened, and we all trooped for a day at Ghadira.

Now these are supposed to have been passengers on a plane which had been hijacked, by two gunmen who had hand grenades and other weapons. They were meant to be on a trip from Sabha in the south of the country to Mitiga Airport just outside Tripoli but instead the plane was hijacked and intended to go to Rome. Then the hijackers changed their mind and made for Malta.

Where after a parley lasting some three hours or so, the passengers began to be released and calmly, solemnly one could say, made their way down the steps and into a waiting bus.

As for the alleged hijackers, one was even allowed to go out on to the steps and wave the Gaddafi green flag before gently being allowed down and surrendered their weapons. Later the weapons were found to be fake.

We still do not have a key to try and understand what was really going on. The alleged hijackers were arraigned in court at mid-day on Christmas Day with the bells of St John's pealing in the background, while the police staged a show of force that has now been largely ridiculed on the social media, especially when the accused were paraded at the court front door instead of entering from the back door as usual.

But the main thing is to understand what the xalata hijack tried to do. If it were only a ruse to get the alleged hijackers to seek asylum in Malta, why then involve all the other passengers?

If on the contrary this was staged to attract media attention worldwide and announce the re-emergence of the Gaddafi Fateh party, this has hardly been remarked upon not just around the world but also, from what one can see, in Libya itself still riven apart from opposing gangs of fighters.

We cannot think of any hijack that resembles this, nowhere in the world, not just now but in living memory.

By coincidence, the hijack, such as it was, interrupted the shooting of a film around the airport. Indeed, the hijack itself had a cinematic sheen to it, as if it were a film of a spoof hijack, a sort of Carry On Hijacking, a screen comedy on the hijack theme.

All's well that ends well. The hijacking and aftermath seems to have highlighted the lack of real preparation in Malta with regards to a hijack that is not this jokey. A testing in other words of our preparedness, or lack of it.

Now that could very well be the real serious reason for this spoof hijack. A warning that we are far more fragile than we think we are.