Convicts hold 23 hostages

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33676, 28 October 1974, Page 1

Convicts hold 23 hostages

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter —Copyright ) THE HAGUE, October 27.

Two Arabs, one of them serving a sentence for hijacking, and two Dutchmen are still holding 23 of the 24 hostages they seized during a Roman Catholic Mass in the chapel of Scheveningen Prison yesterday .

A 49-year-old woman -has been handed over by -the four convicts to the -police, who have surrounded the prison, supported by a Dutch marine detachment of sharpshooters.

Negotiations by radio—two guards who were captured were carrying radiotelephone sets—are dragging on, but, a Justice Ministry spokesman has said, progress is very slow. One of the four is Adnan Ahmad Nuri, aged 23, a Palestinian serving a fiveyear sentence for hijacking a British airliner and setting it on fire at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, on March 3. The others have been identified as an Algerian, Mohammed Koudache, aged 23, and Daan Denie and Jan Brouwers, two young Dutchmen, who held a farm family hostage for 30 hours last, year.

One of the prisoners’ demands is that they be joined by a fellow-Palestinian arrested and sentenced after the Schipol incident, Sami Hussin Tanima, aged 22. Police sources say that Tanima was in the Scheveningen Prison hospital after going on a hunger strike in Haarlem Prison in an earlier effort to be reunited with Nuri. (Scheveningen is the only prison in the Netherlands with hospital facilities). The hostages include the all-male choir, some of their wives and children who were attending the Mass, a 59-yeaf-old Roman Catholic priest, an organist and two unarmed prison guards. Three of the children are aged under 12. The four rebellious inmates, who are reported to

be armed, grabbed the host-i ages after jumping from their seats, and taking control of I the prison chapel, as nine other convicts, apparently j aware of what was about to I happen, quietly filed out. 1 The four also demanded - ; that an Arab diplomat come | to the prison to talk to -them. An Arab interpreterhas arrived at the prison to. talk with the guerrillas, whohave demanded that thenegotiations be held in Ara-; bic. The two Palestinians, Nurii and Tanima, were gaoled for-

i five years on June 6, this year, after telling a Haarlem ( Court that they had hijacked • the British jet, on a flight , from Beirut to London, “to i. help the Palestinian people.” Denie and Brouwers were i each sentenced last May toil [seven years in prison for, [holding a family hostage in[< a country house near Utrecht. [ i armed bank robbery, andi illegal possession of weapons. 1 <