Hangovers from a hijacking

Press, 16 August 1980, Page 15

Hangovers from a hijacking

. Dorothea Salter, aged 28, boarded the Lufthansa Boeing in Majorca with her husband Peter, aged 26, to fly home to Frankfurt They were a typically loving couple, but when they left the plane she was determined to divorce him. The Salters were two of the 82 passengers on the “Landshut" plane hijacked by a Baader-Meinhoff “Red Army faction” commando group of three men and a woman on October 13, 1977. Their five-day nightmare ended at Mogadishu, Somalia, when an elite German assault team of. “GSG 9" borderguards was flown in secretly and overpowered the terrorists, killing the three meh. Now, a Government psychiatrist, Hans-Harro. Rauschelbach, has ad s'pme of his findings- oh how the passengers were affected by the experience. Badly and bitterly, in most cases, he reports. “In such a situation, many people react in a confused ana incomprehensible manner,” he notes. The case of Dorothea and Peter Salter was perhaps the most unusual. Dorothea was able to study Peter .closely as the aircraft flew to Mogadishu via Rome, Nicosia, and Aden. For the first time in her .life she realised that he was not the kindly husband she had thought him to be — he was frightened

and selfish. "He was absolutely no help at all. He did not once even squeeze my hand and comfort she told the psychiatrist. Instead, in the blistering stopover at Aden, he even drank her tiny water ration as well as his own. She never forgave him and they divorced. Today, she lives alone with her four-year-old daughter, Anke. ; ' The passengers, in add!-, tion to their physical discomfort and private fears, saw their own pilot forced to go on his knees to one of the gunmen, who shot him dead at point-blank range. ?■ Many of the passengers today complain of suffering from insomnia, nervousness. and claustrophobia, and fear of -the . dark, noise, and crowds. : Their files are far from being closed and classified, for many are seeking full financial indemnity for their suffering and payment for their current medical bills. The experience awakened . ancient nightmares for a 60-year-old-Austrian Jewess who survived Nazi concentration camps. In her sleep she mixes up * the Nazi camp guards and the hijackers. As time passes, a longdrawn out “war” has been waged between many of the passengers and the authorities looking after their case and responsible for paying any rightful claims..

By

MICHEL CONRATH,

Agence France-Presse