Flight to Nowhere

Darting first one way, then the other, a headless eel was loose in the Middle East last week. So some Japanese described the skyjacked J.A.L. 747 as it flew east from Amsterdam to Dubai, then west again to Damascus, and finally to its last landing in Libya in an eerily aimless 87-hour journey that endangered the lives of all aboard and caused Israel to go on military alert. Fearing that the jumbo jet might be used in a kamikaze attack on one of their cities, the Israelis were prepared, if it came too close, to black out their entire country or even shoot the plane down.

If the skyjackers had been on a definite mission, they had not expressed their goal clearly, and they certainly had not accomplished it. All they had to show for their efforts was a dead female fellow conspirator, accidentally killed by her own hand grenade at the start of the skyjacking and an obliterated $29 million airplane. "It was the most hopelessly baffling case," said Japanese Transportation Minister Torasaburo Shintani, who was ready to offer as much as $5,000,000 in ransom. "From start to finish we never knew what they wanted. Money we were prepared to pay and political asylum too. We're still in the dark."

The 22-member crew and the 118 passengers were just as baffled. Shortly after taking off from Amsterdam en route to Tokyo, the plane was seized by the four surviving terrorists--one Japanese and three Arabs--identifying themselves as "Sons of the Occupied Territory." They forced Captain Kenji Konuma to land at Dubai, one of the seven tiny states in the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf.

While his troops surrounded the plane, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktum, 26, Defense Minister of the Emirates, tried to talk the skyjackers into letting the passengers go. He asked them to name a price, but they refused to discuss money. Were they interested in exchanging the passengers for some political prisoner? the Defense Minister asked. "It was strange, very strange," mused Maktum. "All they ever asked for was sandwiches, ice, breakfast, lunch and dinner." Their only explanation: "We are awaiting instructions from our headquarters."

Apparently, a message never came. What did arrive, curiously, was a telegram from West Germany: IF YOU INTEND TO KILL ALL PASSENGERS ABOARD, DO IT AT ONCE. OTHERWISE, BE HUMANE ENOUGH TO RELEASE THEM. IT SOUNDS RIDICULOUS FOR YOU TO PERMIT THOSE WHOM YOU WANT TO KILL TO RECEIVE REFRESHMENTS AND MEALS. It was Signed: 13,569 INHABITANTS OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY. At first thought to be coded instructions to the skyjackers, the telegram proved to be a humanitarian plea from a group of concerned West Germans. However naive, the message may have had an effect. Almost 79 hours after landing in Dubai, the plane took off. "The skyjackers were even laughing and joking," recalls Maktum.

The next leg of the journey was no laughing matter for Captain Konuma. Because a window had been cracked by the grenade explosion, he had to fly at the low altitude of 3,000 ft. "It was such a dangerous flight that I was covered with cold sweat," he says. Konuma received permission to refuel at Damascus. Just after the jet took off again two hours later, a terse message came over the radio from a Palestinian organization in Amsterdam: "You are to be released." Hearing that, the terrorists told the captain to land at Benghazi.

Tears and Fire. Fifteen minutes from the city, the skyjackers radioed for permission to land and were refused. Arguing heatedly, they threatened to blow up the plane in the air. Libyan officials finally relented. The Japanese terrorist told the passengers that the skyjacking had been done for the "whole of the world." It was also intended to expose the "imperialism" of Israel, Germany, the U.S. and Japan. Then he started to weep and apologized for "causing everyone so much inconvenience." When the last passenger had left the plane, the skyjackers set fire to it. Reports TIME'S Joseph Fitchett, who was on the scene: "Passengers were barely clear before a wisp of black smoke curled out of the cockpit. A tongue of flame followed, then crept back along the top of the fuselage. The plane began to collapse with a series of small reports. Finally, the tail section keeled down, and half an hour after touchdown, three big explosions, like distant summer thunder, sent up a mushroom pall of black smoke as debris and sparks sprayed an area a kilometer across. All that remained this morning was the tail assembly and a motor."

Libyan troops quickly picked up the terrorists as they tried to escape across the field. Although they have been disowned and denounced by all established Palestinian organizations, they are probably part of an autonomous offshoot of the fedayeen movement. In the past, Libya has dealt leniently with Palestinian terrorists; this time may be different. Even in what Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban calls the "pathological capital of the world," this skyjacking may be too much to stomach.

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