LYON, France (Reuters) - A mentally-ill Italian who tried to hijack a Paris-bound Alitalia airliner has told police he thinks Muslims should be killed, Europe should unite into a powerful single state and all humans will turn into UFOs.
Stefano Savorani, who hijacked an Air France plane to Paris in 1999 but failed in a similar bid on Wednesday, said during interrogation that he admired France's King Louis XIV and thought the French were the people most likely to agree with his theories, a judicial source said on Thursday.
"Muslims are the enemy number one they bring disgrace and sickness," the source quoted him as saying.
"Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are the spokesmen," Savorani said, referring to Saudi-born radical Osama bin Laden and the Iraqi president.
"All Saracens should be punished with death," he added, using a term Christians applied to Muslims and Arabs during the Crusades.
Savorani, 29, was arrested without a fight at Lyon airport after threatening the pilot of a Bologna-Paris flight with an object he claimed was a bomb but turned out to be only a television remote control device.
The MD-80 aircraft landed in Lyon on Wednesday afternoon and all 57 passengers and seven crew were unharmed.
During the short drama, Savorani variously claimed to be hijacking the plane in the name of bin Laden's al Qaeda group and staging a terrorist action "against bin Laden".
His mother told Italian news agencies her son was schizophrenic and had been receiving treatment following several previous hijacking attempts. French police said he was clearly mentally disturbed.
According to the judicial source, Savorani told police he advocated "the creation of a single and powerful European state based on classical values and Roman, Greek and Norman religious rites".
He claimed to belong to a group called Vitalunismo, linked to a new religion he called Avenismo, which posits that all humans are molecules of different gods.
Savorani said he had written two unpublished books, one about religion and one entitled "The Work of Idiots".
"We are all destined to turn into UFOs," the source quoted him as saying.
Savorani, a former policeman, said he had previously explained his theories to French police after being arrested in 1999 for hijacking a Marseille-to-Paris flight.
A French court found him ineligible to stand trial because of his mental illness and had him returned to Italy for hospitalisation.
Italian news agencies said Savorani also tried to take over a Milan-Rome train in 1998 and demanded that the driver head for Paris. He was swiftly overcome and sent to a psychiatric hospital for care.
Savorani was a policeman from 1992 until 1997 and colleagues, contacted after his 1999 hijacking, expressed shock and said they had always thought he was a sound colleague from a good home.