A Ukrainian citizen was on board the Ethiopian Airlines plane that was hijacked by its co-pilot and diverted to Geneva, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has told Interfax-Ukraine.

"A citizen of Ukraine was on board, [but] he was not hurt," the director of the ministry's information policy department, Yevhen Perebyinis, said on Monday.

An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767-300 passenger jet en route from Addis Ababa to Rome sent out a signal that it had been hijacked when flying over Sudan on Monday. The plane then made an emergency landing in Geneva.

The hijacker turned out to be the co-pilot, who seized control of the plane when the captain left the cockpit, according to a Web site of Tribune de Geneve.

After landing, the co-pilot surrendered to the police and asked the Swiss authorities for asylum.

The Geneva police said the co-pilot, an Ethiopian national born in 1983, was unarmed. The Interior Ministry of Switzerland is holding an inquiry into this incident.

According to the airport press service, none of the 200 passengers on the aircraft were hurt.