It was a hijacking with a difference.
There were no political demands. There were
no negotiations over hostages.
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| The moment the hijack was thwarted |
The hijackers had a far more sinister plan
for Air France Flight 8969 - one that was to provide a blueprint for the al
Qaeda attacks of 11 September, 2001. It was thwarted only after a siege of
quite extraordinary drama.
The story began on Christmas Eve, 1994.
Four men in Algerian police uniforms boarded the Air France flight as it sat on
the tarmac in Algiers.
They said they needed to check the
passengers’ passports but their nervous behaviour - and the fact they were
armed - raised the suspicions of one of the flight attendants.
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| Hijackers belonged to Armed Islamic Group (seen here) |
Algerian troops based at the airport also
grew suspicious: they had not expected the plane to be searched. They began
surrounding the plane, at which point the four ‘police’ revealed that they were
terrorists. The plane had been hijacked.
The first thing they did was to make all
the women on board cover their heads. They then broadcast a chilling message
over the intercom: ‘Allah has selected us as his soldiers. We are here to wage
war in his name.’
The airport control tower tried to
negotiate, but the terrorists were very different from those involved in
previous hijacks. They said - ominously - that they intended to fly the plane
to Paris.
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| The plane on the ground: destination, Eiffel Tower |
The Algerian authorities refused to remove
the landing stairs, thereby preventing the plane from taking off. The hijackers
decided to force the issue. They singled out one of the passengers - an
Algerian police officer - and shot him in the head.
‘Don’t kill me. I have a wife and child,’
were his last words.
The leader of the hijackers, Abdul Yahia,
was ruthless and fanatical. No less fanatical was his sidekick, named Lofti. He
was given the nickname ‘Madman’ by the unfortunate hijacked passengers. Another
hijacker was known as ‘the Killer’, since it was he who undertook the
shootings.
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| First, the hijack. Then, the movie: The Assault |
He soon led away his second victim, a
commercial attaché from the Vietnamese Embassy in Algiers named Bui Giang To.
He was also shot in the head
The night time hours were extremely tense,
although there were no more shootings. In the morning - on Christmas Day - the
French Interior Minister learned some terrible news from a mole in the Algiers Islamic
Group who had planned the hijack.
‘The terrorists’ true aim was to crash the
plane in Paris,’ he said. In fact, they intended to crash it into the Eiffel
Tower, thereby destroying one of the great symbols of France.
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| Hijackers' goal |
When the plane was once again refused
clearance for take off, a third passenger was shot. The French government now
pleaded with its Algerian counterpart to allow the plane to get airborne, but
with only enough fuel to reach Marseilles.
On 26 December, the plane finally took off,
touching down in Marseilles at 3.30am. The hijackers demanded 27 tonnes of
fuel, far more than the 9 tonnes needed to reach Paris. The inevitable
conclusion was that the plane was to be turned into a deadly fireball.
By now, a crack French military unit was on
standby, waiting to storm the aircraft. The moment for action came at 5pm, when
Yahia was about to order the death of another passenger.
The crack forces rapidly moved the
air-stairs towards the airplane. They then forced the doors and entered the
plane, firing all the time. The hijackers returned fire and bullets were soon
flying through the cabin. Grenades were also detonated, filling the plane with
dense smoke.
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| Deadly 9/11 attacks |
The fire-fight was described by one flight
attendant as ‘an apocalypse.’ But it was an effective apocalypse. Within 20
minutes, all four hijackers were dead and the 166 passengers and crew were
escorted to safety. They were shocked, stunned and exhausted from their ordeal,
but at least they were still alive.
The hijackers never reached Paris and their
ultimate goal of the Eiffel Tower. But they provided the blueprint for a very
similar, and far more deadly hijacking on 11 September, 2001.
On that occasion, nearly 3,000 innocent
people tragically lost their lives.
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UK paperback
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NOW PUBLISHED IN PAPERBACK
And for my American readers, it is now published under the title: The Boy Who Went to War: The Story of a Reluctant German Soldier in WWII available here
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Newly published US edition
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'Idiosyncratic and utterly fascinating... an extraordinary tale of hardship, horror and amazing good fortune' James Delingpole, The Daily Mail
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