THE NETHERLANDS: Mission: Possible

At a Saturday-night Mass in the Scheveningen maximum-security prison in The Netherlands, four prisoners interrupted the singing of the hymns. Brandishing two pistols and several spring knives that they had smuggled in, they took captive the choir and members of their families, the organist, a priest and two unarmed guards—22 people in all.

What followed was a suspense story with enough tension, surprise and heroism to make a palpable TV hit. One of the rebellious prisoners, for instance, was Adnan Ahmed Nuri, a Palestinian terrorist who was serving five years for hijacking and burning a British Airways...

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