Of these, both commandeering and hijacking relate to seizing
control of an aircraft. Commandeering is seizing control of an aircraft, while it is on
the ground, with its doors open. Hijacking is seizing control of a plane, with the crew
or/and passengers inside after the doors have been closed---whether it is still on the
ground or in flight---by one or more persons, who are or who claim to be armed, for a
purpose, which need not necessarily be criminal.
A hijacking can be carried out by even a member of the crew.
Chinese civil aviation has the only recorded incident of self-hijacking in October, 1998,
when the pilot of an Air China flight from Beijing to Kunming in Yunnan, took it instead
to Taiwan after threatening to crash it killing the passengers if the other members of the
crew prevented him from flying to Taiwan.
Generally, hijacking carries a more severe penalty than
commandeering. Both offences involve intimidation, but, while in commandeering the danger
is more to the aircraft and other property on the ground, in hijacking it is to the plane
as well as the human beings inside.
The first incident of commandeering in the history of civil
aviation took place on February 21, 1931, at the city of Arequipa in Peru when a group of
local revolutionaries surrounded an aircraft and demanded that the pilot fly them to
wherever they wanted. He refused and the revolutionaries terminated their seizure on March
2, without any damage to the plane.
The first recorded incident of hijacking took place in July 1948,
when four Chinese hijackers seized control of a Cathay Pacific flight from Macau to Hong
Kong. The ensuing struggle between the hijackers and the crew resulted in a crash killing
all (25) aboard.
Between 1948 and 1957, there were 15 hijackings all over the
world, an average of a little more than one per annum. Between 1958 and 1967, this climbed
to 48--an annual average of about five. There was an explosive increase to 38 in 1968 and
82 in 1969, the largest number in a single year in the history of civil aviation. During
the third 10-year period between 1968 and 1977, there were 414 hijackings--an annual
average of 41.
The increase since 1958 could be attributed to the following
factors:
* First, the use by the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
of inspired hijackings as a weapon of destabilisation against the Fidel Castro regime
which had seized power in Cuba in January, 1959, and nationalised all plantations and
other property owned by US businessmen.
The hijackers inspired or instigated by the CIA did not make any
political demands as a price for releasing the aircraft and passengers. They just forced
the pilot to fly to either the US naval base at Guantanamo in Cuba or to the US and sought
political asylum after condemning the communist regime at a press conference arranged by
the CIA.
The CIA thus used hijacking as a psychological weapon to have the
Castro regime discredited in the eyes of the Cuban people as well as of those of other
Latin American countries in order to prevent an emulation of the Cuban communist model.
Another CIA objective was to cause a depletion in the Cuban civil aviation fleet strength,
thereby causing air transportation difficulties inside Cuba.
The US did not return the planes to Cuba. Instead, these were
ordered to be seized by US courts as compensation for the properties of US businessmen
nationalised by the Castro regime.
* Second, the retaliatory hijackings inspired or instigated by
the Cuban intelligence, involving either US or non-US aircraft carrying a large number of
US nationals. Like the CIA, the Cuban intelligence used these hijackings purely as a
psychological weapon to have the US discredited.
* Third, the emulation of the CIA's covert action technique by
the Taiwanese intelligence in its psychological warfare against Beijing by inspiring or
instigating hijackings from the mainland to Taiwan.
* Four, the beginning of the extensive use of hijackings as a
weapon of national liberation or ideological struggle by the various Palestinian
organisations and ideological groups supporting the Palestinian cause such as the
Baader-Meinhof of West Germany, the Red Army factions of West Germany and Japan etc after
the Arab-Israeli war of July, 1967. The targets of their hijackings were mainly Israeli
nationals.
* And, five, the use of hijackings as a weapon of struggle by
other political, religious or ideological organisations or political dissident groups in
the rest of the world. Some of these were supported by foreign intelligence agencies such
as the support of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan to various anti-Indian
groups since 1971, while others were not.
Since the Tokyo Convention of 1963, the International Civil
Aviation Organisation had been preoccupied with further tightening the international laws
relating to criminal acts against civil aviation and the explosive post-1967 increase led
to a review of the CIA'a policy in the US and to the adoption of new international
conventions against hijacking and other criminal acts against civil aviation such as those
of the Hague (1970) and Montreal (1971) making it obligatory for nations to arrest and
prosecute hijackers or extradite them to the countries whose aircraft was hijacked.
The second Nixon Administration, which came to office in 1973,
ordered the discontinuance by the CIA of the use of hijacking as a covert action weapon
against the Castro regime. The Cuban intelligence followed suit. The same year, the two
countries reached an agreement for the prosecution or return of the hijackers and the
aircraft to each other's country.
The Taiwanese intelligence also followed the CIA's
example--vis-à-vis China. In 1977, Havana abrogated the 1973 agreement with the US
following an explosion on board a Cuban airline in October, 1976, killing 73 persons, due
to a device suspected to have been planted by anti-Castro Cuban exiles. The Cuban
authorities suspected that the CIA was aware of their plans to destroy this aircraft, but
did not intentionally alert Havana. However, even after discontinuing the agreement, they
continued to observe its provisions.
These measures plus the improvement in Israel's relations with
Egypt and Jordan, the renunciation of terrorism by the Palestine Liberation Organisation,
the on-going peace talks between the PLO and Israel, the collapse of the communist states
in East Europe, which reduced the scope for sanctuaries for terrorists, and the more
cautious attitude of countries such as Libya and Syria after the US declared them
State-sponsors of international terrorism, the collapse of ideological terrorist groups
such as the Baader-Meinhof and the Red Army Faction and the tightening of civil aviation
security measures by all countries have arrested and reversed the steep upward movement of
hijackings.
However, the situation has not returned to the pre-1968 level and
the number of successful hijackings continues to be disturbingly high--an average of 18
per annum during the latest 10-year period between 1988 and 1997, as against the pre-1968
average of five. On the brighter side, the number of terrorism-motivated hijackings has
significantly decreased, while those motivated by personal reasons such as a desire to
migrate abroad have greatly increased.
The discontinuance in 1973 by the involved intelligence agencies
except the ISI of Pakistan of the use of hijackings as a weapon against their adversaries,
plus the initial security measures at airports, led to a 50 per cent drop in hijackings as
could be seen from the following figures for the years preceding and following 1973:
1968 --- 38
1969 --- 82
1970 --- 74
1971 --- 55
1972 --- 56
1973 --- 22
1974 --- 20
1975 --- 19
1976 --- 20
1977 --- 28
As against this, the enactment of stringent laws against
hijackings and the further strengthening of the security measures at airports led to only
an additional 10 per cent decline in hijackings. It would not, therefore, be an
exaggeration to say that the discontinuance of the use of hijackings as a covert weapon by
the intelligence agencies contributed significantly to the post-1973 drop in hijackings.
A comparison of the hijackings during the five 10-year periods
between 1948, when the first hijacking was reported, and 1997 is as follows:
1948-1957--- 15
1958-1967 --- 48
1968-1977--- 414
1978-1987--- 260
1988-1997 --- 180
Of the 87 hijackings between 1993 and 1997, only seven, that is
less than 10 per cent, were terrorism-motivated. 68 were committed for personal reasons
and the remaining 12 were committed for other reasons. 44 per cent of all the hijackings
during this period took place in three countries--China (23), Russia (6) and Ethiopia (6)
Geographically, South, South-East and East Asia recorded the
highest number of hijackings (33 incidents or 38 %), with China and India having the most
incidents. West Asia and North Africa had the second highest number (16 incidents or 18
%), with Saudi Arabia and Sudan each recording four. The sub-Saharan region had 12
incidents (14 %), a half of them in Ethiopia. Europe had 11 incidents (13 %), with
Germany, Malta and Spain each reporting two hijackings. Eight incidents (9 %) were
reported from Central Eurasia, 6 of them from Russia. The Latin American and the Caribbean
region had 7 incidents (8 %), with Brazil having two. North America (the US and Canada)
had none.
63 of the 87 hijackings between 1993 and 1997 involved domestic
flights and only the remaining 24 involved international flights. The preference of
hijackers for domestic flights is due to the fact that the majority of hijackers --
whether they be black-listed terrorists or hijackers for economic or other reasons-- have
generally no access to travel documents and hence focus on domestic flights.
India, which is less economically developed than China, has had
no hijackings for economic reasons whereas over 90 per cent of the hijackings in China,
despite its economic miracle, are for economic reasons (22 out of 23 incidents between
1993 and 1997). This is due to the fact that an under-privileged Indian wanting to migrate
abroad to improve his economic prospects has no difficulty in getting travel documents,
whereas for an under-privileged Chinese, despite the post-1979 relaxation of travel
restrictions, the only way of going to Taiwan or elsewhere through Taiwan is by hijacking
a plane.
Despite the authoritarian regime in Beijing, its death penalty
for hijackers and long prison sentences for negligent security bureaucrats, one-fourth of
all reported hijackings (23 out of 87) in the world during this period were from China.
Civil aviation security experts attribute this partly to the poor safety systems
technology in Chinese airports, particularly in the interior provinces. It is also
possible that many of the Chinese hijackers were not armed, but pretended to be, but
precise data on this are not available.
In percentage terms, of all the terrorism-affected countries,
India has recorded the highest percentage of over 50 per cent of the hijackings due to
terrorism sponsored by an external power (Pakistan)--- 7 out of the 13 hijackings since
the hijacking of Indian planes by ISI-trained groups started in 1971.
HIJACKINGS IN INDIA
Since hijacking of Indian planes started in January, 1971, when
two members of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) hijacked a plane to Lahore
and blew it up with explosives given by the ISI at Lahore after releasing the passengers
and crew, there have been 13 hijackings--all of Indian Airlines aircraft. During the
training of terrorists, the ISI instructs them to avoid Air India planes lest
international concern be aroused due to the presence of a large number of foreign
passengers.
Three of these hijackings took place in the 1970s, of which one
by Kashmiri extremists was sponsored by the ISI, while the other two were
personally-motivated.
There were five hijackings in the 1980s--three of them in
1982--all by Sikh extremists backed by the ISI.
There were five in the 1990s---four of them in 1993, all
personally-motivated, and the fifth, the latest of IC- 814, was by an international
Islamic jihadi organisation backed by the ISI.
Thus, of the 13 hijackings, seven were by ISI-trained
organisations---- five by Sikh extremists, all India-based, one by Kashmiri extremists,
again India-based, and the seventh by a Pakistan-based international Islamic jihadi
organisation.
All these hijackings took place when the military was in
power--five under Zia-ul-Haq and one each under Yahya Khan and Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
After a series of five hijackings in quick succession by Sikh
terrorists between 1981 and 1984, India managed to get clinching evidence of ISI
involvement in 1984 in the form of a West German report that the pistol given to the
hijackers of August 24,1984, at Lahore by the ISI was part of a consignment supplied to
the Pakistan Government by the West German manufacturers.
This resulted in a severe warning to Pakistan by Washington and a
total discontinuance by the ISI of the use of hijacking as a weapon against India for 15
years till the latest hijacking on December 24,1999, after Gen. Musharraf seized power on
October 12.
SPECIAL FEATURES OF IA 814 HIJACKING
* This was the first hijacking of an Indian plane by a
Pakistan-based international Islamic jihadi organisation, namely the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
(HUM), previously known as the Harkat-ul-Ansar, which was declared by the US under its
laws as an international terrorist organisation in October, 1997, and which, according to
the annual reports of the Counter-Terrorism Division of the US State Department, is a
member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front For Jihad Against the US and
Israel and a signatory of his fatwa against US and Israeli nationals.
* This was the second hijacking in the world by an Islamic
fundamentalist organisation of Afghan-war vintage. The first was the hijacking of an Air
France flight from Algiers by four terrorists of the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria on
December 24,1994.The French terminated the hijacking at Marseille by killing all the
hijackers.
* This was the first hijacking in India in which the hijackers
intentionally and brutally killed one of the passengers in order to intimidate the pilot.
In the past hijackings, the terrorists had avoided ill-treating the passengers. In the Air
France hijacking too, the Algerian terrorists of Afghan war-vintage had intentionally
killed three passengers.
* This was the second largest terrorist team (five hijackers) to
have hijacked an aircraft anywhere in the world. The terrorist team, which hijacked the
Air France flight to Entebbe in 1976, had ultimately 7 hijackers, but only four of them
had flown by the aircraft and the remaining had joined the team after the aircraft landed
at Entebbe. Six terrorists of the Popular Front For the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) had
hijacked an Olympic Airlines flight from Athens to Beirut, on July 22,1970. The Greek
authorities accepted the demand of the hijackers for the release of seven terrorists.
A mixed group of five Palestinian and Japanese terrorists
hijacked a Japanese Airways flight from Amsterdam to Tokyo on July 20, 1973. The
terrorists blew up the plane at Tripoli in Libya after releasing the passengers. All other
hijackings of the world involved between one and four hijackers, most of them only one.
When there is only one hijacker, he would generally be in the
cockpit. Danger to the passengers from a commando intervention is the least, unless the
lone hijacker has explosives. When there are two hijackers, the danger is more, but still
manageable since the second hijacker would generally be near the front door, which reduces
the danger of deaths of passengers in cross fire. If there are three hijackers, one each
would be at the front and rear doors, increasing the risk of cross-fire deaths. The
maximum vulnerability of the passengers arises when there are more than three hijackers,
with one or more of them stationed in the middle.
* This was the sixth longest hijacking since 1948 after those of
the El Al by the PFLP on July 23, 1968 (40 days), the Air France (Entebbe) by Palestinian
and German terrorists on June 27,1976 (8 days), the Pakistan International Airways by the
Al Zulfiquar on March 2,1981 (13 days), the TWA by a Shia group on June 14,1985 (18 days),
and the Kuwait Airways by a Shia group on April 5,1988 (18 days).
* This was the sixth major hijacking since 1948 in which the
targeted Government conceded the demands of the hijackers, wholly or in part. The others
were: the release of seven convicted Palestinian terrorists by the Greek authorities after
the hijacking of an Olympic Airways flight on July 22,1970;the release of seven Arab
terrorists imprisoned in the UK, West Germany and Switzerland after the hijacking of three
flights of the Pan-Am, TWA and Swissair by the PFLP on September 6,1970; the release by
West Germany of the Arab terrorists arrested for the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the
Munich Olympics after the hijacking of a Lufthansa aircraft on October 29, 1972, by the Al
Fatah; the release of four Arab terrorists arrested for acts of terrorism in Cyprus after
the hijacking of a KLM plane on November 25,1973; and the release of nearly 30 political
prisoners by the Zia-ul-Haq regime after the hijacking of a PIA aircraft by the Al
Zulfiquar on March 2,1981. These were the publicly-admitted instances of conceding the
hijackers' demands. There have been other unadmitted instances.
HANDLING HIJACKINGS: PREVENTIVE
The handling of hijackings has the preventive and crisis
management aspects. Of all terrorism-related offences, plane hijacking is the easiest to
prevent through thorough physical security at the airport. The prevention drill involves
evaluation of the psychological profile of the passenger at the time of his checking-in
through carefully-framed questions; x-ray of the checked- in baggage and, if necessary,
their identification by the passenger before they are loaded; X-Ray of hand baggage;
door-frame metal detector tests of passengers; their personal search; and ladder point
checking by the airline staff to neutralise dangers due to negligence of the airport
security staff or their complicity with the hijackers.
If this security drill is strictly followed, chances of a
hijacking could be reduced by 90 per cent. There could still be a 10 per cent threat due
to the hijackers somehow managing to take arms inside due to the negligence or complicity
of the airport as well as the airline security staff or their intimidating the pilot by
pretending to be armed, even though they may not have arms.
To eliminate even this 10 per cent possibility of a hijacking,
airlines such as El Al, the Swissair and Air Lanka have well-trained security staff
travelling on each flight under the cover of either passengers or cabin crew members. The
effectiveness of these in-flight security officers depends on the deniability of their
presence. That is why, Israel, Switzerland and other countries, which use Sky Marshals, do
not officially admit their doing so. The recent open announcements on this subject by the
Govt. of India would reduce the effectiveness of the proposed in-flight security measures.
For in-flight security duties, the El Al takes serving and
retired officers of the Shin Bet, the Israeli equivalent of our Intelligence Bureau, and
Ya'ma'm, the Israeli equivalent of our National Security Guards. Shin Bet officers under
the cover of airline staff are also attached to the traffic counter at the airport to
scrutinise the travel documents of the passengers and study their psychological profile.
Those responsible for in-flight security duties are issued with
weapons with specially-designed low-intensity, low-impact bullets, which would enter the
human body, but not exit. To prevent damage to the aircraft in cross-fire, the fuselage is
armour-plated. They are also given well-concealable transmitting sets to discreetly
transmit to the ground all the happenings in the cabin if the plane is hijacked. The plane
has concealed cameras in the cockpit, cabin and toilets.
These security measures have ensured the 100 per cent security of
El Al flights. While El Al's airport and off-airport facilities have been subject to
frequent terrorist attacks, an El Al flight was successfully hijacked only once in 1968.
This intensive and intrusive security checking has been at the
cost of the quality of service to the passengers due to delays in take-offs, the increase
in the number of passengers taken to earn additional money to meet the extra expenditure
on security etc. It is said that Swissair manages to provide the same tight security on
its flights without sacrificing the quality of service.
CRISIS MANAGEMENT
The crisis management drill comes into force if an aircraft is
hijacked due to a failure of preventive measures. The drill deals with the management of
the relatives, the media, the aircraft and the hijackers, preparation of the groundwork
for commando intervention, if it becomes necessary and has operational, psychological and
political aspects.
The psychological aspect focusses on keeping up the morale of the
relatives of the passengers, encouraging self-restraint in media coverage till the
hijacking is terminated and keeping the hijackers engaged in negotiations in order to
persuade them to give up the hijacking, if possible, and give time to the commandos to
prepare themselves for intervention, if necessary.
The operational aspect focusses on ensuring that the aircraft
remains in an airport of our territory, if possible, or otherwise, in an airport of a
friendly country and does not go to an airport in a hostile country and collection of
intelligence and other inputs needed for commando intervention.
The political aspect relates to winning the co-operation of other
countries and our own political parties in terminating the hijacking.
The Kandahar episode has brought to light the following serious
deficiencies in our national security management (NSM):
* The failure of the intelligence and counter-intelligence
machinery to detect the presence and activities of the HUM hijackers in Mumbai since
November 5.
* The failure of the Govt. of India and the Indian Airlines
security set-ups to ensure an effective second line of security at the Kathmandu airport,
knowing fully well the security vaccum there.
* The failure of the crisis management group to have the plane
grounded at Amritsar.
* The failure of the Govt. of India to persuade the United Arab
Emirates (UAE) authorities to have the plane detained at Dubai, as they did with the 1984
hijacking of an IA plane by the Sikh extremists.
* The delay in starting the negotiations at Kandahar, knowing
fully well that once we let the plane reach hostile territory in Kandahar, we had no other
option, but to negotiate.
* The total lack of coherence and professionalism in the handling
of the crisis by the crisis management groups at the political and professional levels.
ACTION REQUIRED
* A thorough post-mortem to identify system and human failures
and initiate disciplinary action against those responsible for the failures.
* Independent audit of not only airport and airline security, but
also infrastructure security in places such as nuclear and space establishments, oil
installations etc by non-governmental security experts in order to have a second opinion
from experts not having a vested interest in the cover-up of existing deficiencies.
* A more assertive role by the victims of the failure of
protective security arrangements by taking the Govt, its officers, airline management etc
to court for heavy damages every time there are such serious breaches of security due to
incompetence or negligence or both. Civil aviation security in the US and Canada has
significantly improved due to such an assertive role by the victims and other citizens.
If we carry on, as we seem to be already doing, as if there was
nothing wrong with our national security and crisis management, we are in for another
nasty surprise.
B.RAMAN
(1-2-00)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India,and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies,
Chennai.
E-Mail:corde@vsnl.com)
