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The body of the murdered American had been lying on the tarmac for about two hours when a hijacker told the tower, "The Red Cross can come and get the body." The hijacker then called for fuel, food and water, saying, "I want 200 sandwiches, 150 apples and 88 lbs. of bananas. But the fuel first, and make it fast." As the food and fuel were taken on, the pilot said he wanted the runway cleared for takeoff at dawn. He was asked for his destination. His reply: "I don't know."
The next destination turned out once more to be Algiers, where the plane landed, for the second time, at 7:45 a.m. local time (2:45 a.m. E.D.T.) Saturday. Algerian officials authorized the landing on condition that the hijackers not use violence. Before leaving Beirut, it turned out, the hijackers had demanded that Ali Atwa be released by Greek authorities and brought to Algiers. Otherwise, they said, they would kill all eight Greeks on the plane, including Singer Demis Roussos. Greek authorities complied and sent Atwa to Algiers in an Olympic Airways plane.
Soon after the TWA jetliner landed in Algiers, two ranking Algerian officials came aboard and began discussions with the hijackers. The negotiations evidently paid off. Having released three hostages on arrival, the hijackers then released 58 others. Among them was Dorothy Sullivan of Chicago, who described the tension during the seemingly endless ordeal. One of the original hijackers had been soft-spoken, the other brutal, she said, and the latter liked to go up and down the aisle thumping passengers on the head. Several passengers recalled that Stewardess Uli Derickson, of Newton, N.J., had stood up to the hijackers. Said she, speaking of her passengers: "They're doing what you tell them to do. Why do you keep beating them up?" The released passengers also noted that, before leaving the plane, they were relieved of their cash and valuables by the hijackers.
That evening, the terrorists announced that if their demands were not met by the following morning, they would fly to an unspecified destination, and destroy the plane and perhaps its remaining passengers. By early Sunday afternoon, they had made good on only the first half of their ultimatum, arriving in Beirut for the third time. On the ground, the hijackers called for food, fuel, newspapers and videocassettes. They urged the International Committee of the Red Cross to work for the release of the 50 Shi'ites in Israel and "move fast before it is too late so that all will achieve satisfactory results." The hijackers added ominously that the next communique would be their last, presumably meaning that they planned to destroy the plane afterward. They also announced that they were sending a letter to President Reagan, reputedly signed by the hostages, asking him to negotiate their release and refrain from "any direct military action on our behalf."
At the same time, the hijackers demanded to see Amal Leader Nabih Berri, representatives of the United Nations and the Red Cross, and the ambassadors of France, Spain and Britain; they later agreed that such a meeting could be held at Berri's residence, where he would act as their representative. The terrorists' repeated emphasis on seeing officials of Amal, the mainstream Shi'ite organization, suggested not only that they were seeking a negotiated settlement but that their motivation may have been essentially political rather than ideological.