Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

MOGADISHU HIJACKING RESCUE • 433of immigrants caught at the border. Both the Southern Poverty LawCenter and the Anti-Defamation League have claimed that neo-Nazis and white supremacists have infiltrated the Minutemengroups, charges that have been made also by former Minutemen whohave left the organization. Some militia movement groups havealso stated their intention of forming their own civilian patrol groupsalong the southern border.MOGADISHU HIJACKING RESCUE. On 13 October 1977, fourterrorists of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine(PFLP) hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181, a Boeing 737 flying fromMajorca to Frankfurt carrying 84 passengers and five crew members.The hijackers not only had handguns and crude homemade hand grenadesbut also 60 pounds of plastic explosives and were demandingthat the 10 main Red Army Faction terrorists be freed from WestGerman jails, along with two Palestinians in Turkish jails, as well asdemanding a ransom of $15 million. The hijackers had the plane flyto Rome, Cyprus, Bahrain, Dubai, Aden, and finally to Somalia.Following the murder of the pilot in Aden by the hijackers’leader, the West German government deployed a 26-member Grenzschutzgruppe-9,Germany’s elite counterterrorism force, unit toMogadishu airport to free the hostages. There, on 18 October 1977,two members of the British elite antiterrorist Special Air Services(SAS) accompanied the German team and blinded the terroristswith special magnesium-flash grenades for six seconds, allowing theGermans to storm the plane successfully. Only one of the terroristssurvived, and the remaining hostages were rescued. On hearing thenews of the rescue, three of the leading imprisoned Red Army Factionprisoners, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe,committed suicide. Afterward the Red Army Faction kidnappersholding West German businessman Hanns-Martin Schleyer murderedhim in reprisal for the deaths of their comrades.In January 1978 the last survivor of the four Palestinian hijackers,Souhaila Sami Andrawes, was convicted by a Somali court to20 years’ imprisonment but was released later that year and sent toBaghdad on a cargo plane. Along with her husband and six-year-olddaughter, Andrawes entered Norway from Cyprus in 1991 and obtainedresident status. In October 1994 she was identified and arrestedin Oslo on air piracy charges stemming from the Mogadishu hijacking