Barry Davies
Bloomsbury, 1994, £14.99
The Lufthansa jet hi-jack and associated events of October 1977, of which this book purports to provide a first-hand account, have always worn a fulsome, fearful beard. This book leaves those events far from clean-shaven.
What would help clear away quite a lot of the hair would be access to the recorded negotiations (over five days) between the hijackers and those seeking to end the hijack. On Davies’ account the hijackers were being double-crossed right up to the very point when the plane was successfully stormed, freeing all its civilian passengers. Davies provides more on this aspect of the operation than the hints at the time. Davies was one of two UK-based SAS officers seconded to ‘GS9’ – the German anti-terrorist unit – to specifically help beat the hijack. The hijackers were four pro-Palestinian Arabs whose demands included the release of 11 Red Army Faction (RAF) and 2 Palestinian prisoners held in Germany and Turkey. Davies scene-sets at more than one point to explain how the hijackers were encouraged to believe their demands were being met in order to get the deadlines they’d already set relaxed.
According to Davies, it was sufficient for the hijack leader to be informed on the afternoon of the fourth day (as a deadline already set approached) that the prisoners had been released, were en route, and that plane-to-plane contact with them would eventually be made possible, for him to tell the passengers that they were going to be okay and offer the co-pilot the chance to leave the plane – an offer he declined. If true, this is surprising because the pilot had been murdered the previous day.
The mid-afternoon deadline was finally extended to 1.30 am the following the day. The plane was stormed in the half-hour before midnight when, according to Davies, the hijack leader was again being assured – ‘without any promises being made’ – that direct plant-to-plane contact would soon be possible. Quite why no promises could be made to someone who was about to be shot to pieces remains a mystery. Davies’ particular emphasis of this point – in total contrast to what he states earlier when elaborating the double cross strategy – would be less suspicious if one could understand the rationale for it. Something here doesn’t feel right. For the hijack leader to be prepared many hours before the final deadline to release the only person who could get the plane airborne again does suggest that some thing had been contrived which gave the hijackers optimism. (Newspaper reports after the event claimed that the hijackers were taken totally by surprise by the assault, as they believed that their demands had been conceded.)
The October 1977 events became extremely bearded as news of the anti-hijack assault broke virtually simultaneously with the news of the discovery that in Germany, at Stanheim Prison, three leading RAF prisoners had met sudden deaths (and a fourth was found injured but survived). All four had been held in separate cells, totally isolated, under Conditions of maximum security. Davies includes a speculative chapter on these developments.
The official version is that Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe had had fire arms smuggled into Stanheim and had concealed them despite daily cell searches, and shot themselves.
Davies states quite categorically that he cannot accept that the firearms allegedly used by Baader and Raspe could have been secreted in their cells, but fails to draw further conclusions or follow the implications through. There are many people who do not believe their deaths were suicides: for them the message of the Stanheim deaths was a very stark and sombre one (as may have been the intention).
One of the Mogadishu hijackers, Souhaila Andrawes, survived her injuries and was sentenced to twenty years. She found her way to Norway and settled down. Davies, now a ‘Security Consultant’, was tipped off by ‘a friend’, according to a Sunday Times report,(1) tracked her down (after the publication of this book) and, unannounced, turned up at her front door. Last November she was extradited to Germany to face conspiracy to murder charges arising from the hijack, but not before Davies had reportedly sewn up a deal for a book and film in collaboration with her. According to the Independent (19 March 1996) there are two Germans also in German prisons awaiting trial in connection with the October 1977 events.
This episode is still alive and kicking.
Ian Cameron
Notes
1. ‘Hijacker and SAS Hero United to Write’, Andrew Malone, 11 February 1996.