Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

CHRONOLOGY • xxxvtion (RAF) kidnaps West German busi nessman Hanns-Martin Schleyer,holding him hostage against release of imprisoned RAF comrades.13–18 October: Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine membershijack Mallorca–Frankfurt Lufthansa Flight 181 to Mogadishu, Somalia,demanding release of RAF members from West German jails. After thepilot is murdered, West German antiterrorist commandos storm the planeon 17 October, killing three of four terrorists and freeing hostages. Onlearning of the hijackers’ failure, the RAF prisoners in Germany commitsuicide and RAF kidnappers murder Hanns-Martin Schleyer in reprisal.1978 16 March: Italian Red Brigades kidnap former Italian PremierAldo Moro for release of imprisoned comrades. Moro is murdered andhis body found on 9 May 1978. 25 May: “Unabomber” Theodore J.Kaczynski begins a 17-year mail-bombing campaign directed at academicsand businessmen, resulting in three deaths and the maiming of23 others. He is arrested on 3 April 1996 following his final bombingon 24 April 1995.1979 27 August: Irish Republican Army bombs yacht of Louis EarlMountbatten, killing him and two others and injuring four. 14 February:U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs, is kidnapped byIslamic rebels but killed by the gunfire of Afghan security forces. 4November: Iranian university students storm U.S. embassy in Tehran,with apparent blessing of Ayatollah Khomeini. They hold 53 Ameri canshostage for 444 days, resulting not only in the severance of diplomaticrelations between Iran and the United States but also the ascendance ofIslamic funda mentalist radicals within Iran’s revolutionary regime. 20November: On the first day of the year 1,400 of the Hegira (Islamic)era, Sunni Muslim fundamentalists seize the Masjid al Haram, Islam’sholiest shrine, in Mecca, which is regained by Saudi Arabian nationalguards only after fierce fighting and bloodshed. Rumors of alleged U.S.involvement in the desecration of the shrine sparks riots in Pakistan inwhich the U.S. embassy is burned and an embassy guard killed.1980 24 March: Archbishop of El Salvador and critic of Salvadorangovernment, Oscar Romero y Galdames, is assassinated while sayingMass, presumably by a right-wing death squad. 22 July: DavidBellfield, an American follower of the Ayatollah Khomeini, murdersAli Akbar Tabataba’i, an Iranian anti-Khomeini activ ist, at the latter’shome in a suburb of Washington, D.C. 4 December: Four American