The ordeal had already lasted ten days when the door of Kuwait Airways Flight 422 swung open at Houari Boumedienne Airport in Algiers. Out stepped a frail- looking man, as a caravan of ambulances, police cars and fire trucks stood by below. After being led down the ramp by a doctor -- and a hooded gunman who quickly ran back inside -- Djuma Abdallah Shatti, a 55-year-old Kuwaiti, told of harsh conditions inside the blue-and-white Boeing 747. "Praise be to God, I am fine," said Shatti, who is diabetic, "but they had me tied up all the time, and I am tired. They are not good people. They beat me."
Any doubts about the brutal determination of Shatti's tormentors evaporated as the ordeal of Flight 422 stretched into its second week and gained distinction as the longest uninterrupted skyjacking ever.* After the airliner, en route from Bangkok to Kuwait, was seized on April 5 as it neared the Strait of Hormuz, it began a tortured 3,200-mile journey that took it from Mashhad in northeastern Iran to Larnaca, Cyprus, and finally to Algiers. Deadlines came and went as the skyjackers, having already killed two hostages, threatened the lives of the rest if Kuwait did not meet their demand to free 17 terrorists jailed there since 1983 for bombings of the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait. Three of the 17 are under sentence of death; the others are serving terms of from two years to life. The hijackers still held about 30 of the 112 people originally aboard, three of them related to Kuwait's ruling family.
Events took a chilling turn on Saturday when the hijackers, frustrated by Kuwait's refusal to meet their demand, invited three reporters to the top of the gangway leading to the craft and demanded that Algeria "fill the airplane with fuel, and we will liquidate our account with Kuwait elsewhere. We don't want to have the massacre in a friendly country." Added the hooded gunman who addressed the reporters: "Kuwait has to know that we do not fear death."
The drama on Flight 422 triggered a political outcry across the Middle East. - Troubled that the skyjacking had once again placed Arabs in a bad light and, more important, diverted attention from the four-month-old Palestinian uprising in Arab territories occupied by Israel, the region's leaders rushed to condemn the action. Some Arab officials suspected Iran of being behind the takeover. The evidence was largely circumstantial: one hostage freed during the six-day stop at Larnaca reported that several gunmen joined the hijackers in Iran and brought aboard submachine guns, hand grenades and explosives.
In Kuwait the daily Al-Qabas said the incident was believed to have been masterminded by Imad Mughniyen, 36, a Lebanese who is both cousin and brother- in-law to one of the 17 jailed terrorists. Western intelligence agencies believe Mughniyen has led several attempts to free the prisoners. Among them: at least two other hijackings, including the seizure of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, during which U.S. Navy Diver Robert Stethem was beaten and shot to death. The kidnapers holding many of the more than 20 Western hostages in Lebanon, including nine Americans, have also made release of the prisoners in Kuwait their key demand. In Washington, Administration officials said hostages freed from Flight 422 indicated that Hassan Izz-al-Din, one of four men indicted by a federal grand jury for Stethem's slaying, might be on the Kuwaiti plane.