Czech teenagers hijack airliner

Press, 31 March 1989, Page 6

Czech teenagers hijack airliner

NZPA-Reuter Frankfurt Two armed Czechoslovak teenagers stormed into Prague airport yesterday, sprayed the V.I.P. lounge with gunfire and forced a Hungarian plane to fly them to Frankfurt. The two gunmen, aged 15 and 16, were in custody in West Germany yesterday after giving themselves up. A West German police spokesman said they were armed with a sawn-off shotgun and a rifle.

A spokesman at Prague’s Ruzyne Airport said the two stormed into the secluded V.I.P. lounge near boarding gates and opened fire. They forced their way on board a Soviet-made Tupolev TU-154 of the Hungarian State airline, Malev, which was about to leave after a stopover on its way from Budapest to Amsterdam carrying 110 passsengers.

Passengers said a shot was fired inside the plane while it was still on the ground in Prague but noone was reported to have been hurt in the airport

or among the plane’s 14 passengers and crew. Frankfurt’s deputy police chief, Roland Desch, said he did not believe there was a political motive behind the hijacking. “It’s most likely they wanted to escape,” he said.

A Canadian passenger, who asked not to be identified, said, “They’re young and they want their freedom. What they did is not a legal way, not a nice way, but when you’re young, you take the chance.”

In Prague, the official news agency, CTK, said the Government had “taken steps to achieve extraditionoftheterrorists” but a Frankfurt police spokesman said he believed it was unlikely that extradition would be considered. West German television said the hijackers asked to stay in West Germany. If a court in West Germany convicted them of hijacking, the maximum sentence would be .10 years in prison.

An elderly Czechoslovak passenger, the

writer, Jiri Mucha, said he had not noticed the hijackers until they were standing at the front of the plane with their weapons.

“I thought they were police but they were not,” he said. “I asked them if this was a hijacking and they said yes.” He said the passengers remained calm throughout. The hijackers demanded originally to be taken to the United States, police said. The pilot said he could not fly beyond Europe and the hijackers eventually agreed on Frankfurt.

Hungarian radio said only 10 of the original passengers were still on the plane when it left Prague after the Hungarian consul in Prague, Lajos Taba, offered himself as hostage. Some passengers escaped through the back door of the aircraft before it took off.

The police said the plane was carrying three Hungarians, four Czechoslovaks, one Dutchman, one Romanian and two Canadians.