(5 of 9)
Next stop was Algiers, where local officials responded to the plane's landing request by closing their airport. But they changed their minds after the arrival of an urgent plea from President Reagan to Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid. U.S. officials, who well remember the important role played by Algerian diplomats in settling the Iranian hostage crisis almost five years ago, had hoped that the hijacking could be resolved one way or another in Algiers. But after remaining on the runway there for five hours, during which time they released another 21 passengers, the hijackers ordered the pilot to take off again and head back to Beirut.
It was well past midnight in the Middle East when Flight 847 again landed in Beirut. The airport-tower operator did his best to refuse permission, but Captain Testrake was adamant: he was running out of fuel, and the terrorists were threatening to kill him. A hijacker may have clinched the argument by shouting, "We are suicide terrorists! If you don't let us land, we will crash the plane into your control tower, or fly it to Baabda and crash into the Presidential Palace!" The tower relented.
Once again, the hijackers asked to speak to an Amal official, and when none appeared, they responded by murdering an American passenger and throwing his body onto the tarmac. They claimed the victim, a young man with a crew cut, was a U.S. Marine who had taken part in "security blowups in Lebanon." It was then, after the pilot shouted over the radio, "He just killed a passenger! He just killed a passenger!" that a hijacker declared, "You see? You now believe it. There will be another in five minutes." When the control- tower operator remonstrated with him, saying, "Isn't it a shame, killing an innocent passenger?" the hijacker replied angrily, "Did you forget the Bir al Abed massacre?" He was referring to the March 8 car bombing in the Bir al Abed suburb of Beirut that killed more than 75 Shi'ite Muslims but failed to hurt Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadallah, one of Lebanon's pro-Iranian Shi'ite religious leaders. Shi'ites later claimed that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had engineered the bombing, in an attempt to fight Shi'ite terrorism with counterterrorism; the CIA denied the charge.
Moments after the killing of the passenger, an Amal official and his bodyguard went aboard the plane, where they remained for some time. As negotiations continued, a hijacker asked that all airport lights be turned off, and the demand was met. At the time, it seemed that the hijackers were fearful of an attack by the Israelis or by one or another of their enemies within Lebanon. In fact, however, it later became clear that they wanted the darkness for other reasons: to bring aboard about a dozen additional terrorists as reinforcements, as well as a supply of arms and ammunition; and to remove the six or eight passengers with Israeli- or Jewish-sounding names. A day later, a released passenger, Ken Lanham of San Francisco, reported that the hijackers went up and down the aisle calling out the names of these people, and then led them away.