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According to several passengers' accounts, the hijackers appeared to be in their early 20s; they were beardless and had closely cropped hair. "They were polite, correct," said one woman. "But they had the determined air of cold- blooded killers." Said another passenger: "They seemed excited, very euphoric. They told us that they would give a lesson to the French and to the world, that they would show what they were capable of." The hijackers made certain everyone got the point by brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles, Uzi pistols, homemade hand grenades and two packs of dynamite. Later they placed one 10-stick pack of dynamite in the cockpit and a second under a seat in the middle of the plane and linked them with detonator wire.
One of the terrorists' first concerns was to see that all the women, including the stewardesses, were veiled in the fundamentalist Islamic fashion: those who had no scarves were given cabin blankets. The men recited verses from the Koran and tried to reassure their Algerian compatriots, but, in the words of one passenger, "terrorized" non-Algerians. "They had a kind of art in their terror," an elderly Algerian man told the TF1 television network after the rescue. "Twenty minutes of relaxation and 20 minutes of torture. You never knew what was next."
As Algerian police ringed the airport, Interior Minister Abderahmane Meziane-Cherif rushed to the control tower and began negotiating with the hijackers via the cockpit radio. Using the pilot, Bernard Delhemme, to speak for them, the terrorists demanded the release from house arrest of Abassi Madani and Ali Belhadj, the leaders of the Islamic Salvation Front (F.I.S.), the political party that was banned by the Algerian government in 1992. "Start by freeing the women, the elderly and the children if you want us to start talking," replied Cherif. About four hours into the negotiations, the hijackers began releasing passengers, and by the end of Saturday had freed 63.
As the talks continued, Algerian police, using night-vision devices, identified the hijack leader as Abdul Abdullah Yahia, 25, alias "the Emir." A petty thief and a greengrocer from the tough Algiers neighborhood of Bab El Oued, Yahia was described as belonging to the G.I.A. and a man who had taken part in earlier "attacks of rare violence and savagery." The negotiators said Yahia spoke "approximate" French, seemed "intellectually limited" and ended every sentence with "Inch'Allah," or God willing.
Once they knew with whom they were dealing, the police tried to use family pressure to make Yahia back off. According to the French weekly Nouvel Observateur, they brought his mother to the airport and let her talk directly on the radio to the cockpit. "In the name of God, I implore you, my son, to let all the passengers go," she said. Yahia reportedly fired a few rounds in the direction of the control tower and replied, "Mother, we'll meet in paradise!"