Thirty-six years have passed since the horrifying Pan Am plane hijacking at Karachi Airport. On September 5, 1986, Pan Am flight 73, a Boeing 747, departed Mumbai for New York with scheduled stops in Karāchi and Frankfurt. Pan Am Flight 73 stopped at the Karachi airport for a scheduled stopover at 6:00 a.m. A total of 109 passengers disembarked at Karachi, the busload of fresh passengers from Karachi had barely reached the aircraft standing on the tarmac when the hijacking began to unfold.
A van apparently belonging to the airport’s security guards was parked beside the plane and two hijackers dressed in the sky-blue uniforms of the Pakistan Airport Security Force rushed out of the vehicle up the ramp, firing shots into the air. Another two hijackers joined the first two men, one carrying a briefcase full of grenades. Hence, the four hijackers heavily armed with assault rifles, pistols, grenades, and plastic explosive belts took full control of the aircraft after firing shots at the feet of a flight attendant forcing him to close the door. The five hijackers — Zayed Hassan Abdul Latif Safarini (leader), Wadoud Mohammad Hafiz Alturki, Jamal Saeed, Mohammad Abdullah Khalil Hassan Rahayat, and Mohammad Ahmad Al-Munawar belonged to Abu Nidal Organization (a Palestinian militant group). A grand jury later concluded that the militants were planning to use the hijacked airliner to pick up Palestinian prisoners in both Cyprus and Israel.
Neerja Bhanot, a flight attendant was out of sight of the hijackers and relayed the hijack code to the cockpit crew, who consequently exited the aircraft through the overhead emergency hatch, via the Inertial Reel Escape Device. The exit of the pilots immobilized the aircraft, the lead hijacker Safarini realized that the cockpit crew had escaped and he, therefore, was forced to negotiate with officials. Since the aircraft was nearly full, passengers sat down in the aisles, galleys, and door exits.
“The pilots evacuating the airplane meant that we were not at the mercy of the terrorists, says Dilip Bidichandani, a flight attendant, who could have instructed the plane to be flown into a building, or even blown up whilst in flight.”
In an utter rage, Safarini ordered a random passenger Rajesh Kumar, a 29-year-old to come to the front of the aircraft while he negotiated with officials, stating that if the crew was not sent on the plane within 30 minutes, then Kumar would be shot. This is exactly what happened as Safarini became impatient with the officials and grabbed Kumar and shot him in the head in front of witnesses both on and off the aircraft. Safarini mercilessly heaved Kumar out of the door onto the ramp below which changed everything and showed they were ruthless killers.
The Pakistan Army’s Special Services Group (SSG) commandos and Pakistan Rangers were put on high alert. As Safarini continued to find a way out, much time was wasted. As night began to fall, all hijackers became confused and nervous as 17 hours had passed in futile negotiations. In the midst of this mess, the aircraft lost electric power, plunging the plane into darkness. This infuriated Safarini even more, and he began throwing grenades into the passengers’ seating area, but they soon ran out of ammunition, resulting in some passengers fleeing the aircraft through the aircraft’s emergency exits. The SSG responded by storming the aircraft and seizing the hijackers. The SSG commando unit was headed by Brigadier Tariq Mehmood and the Shaheen Company of the SSG’s 1st Commando Battalion carried out the operation.
“They had lost patience. They let out a war cry,” says Sunshine, another steward. “And began firing into the crowd. There were huge streaks of light breaking the darkness. And screams.”
Neerja Bhanot, a flight attendant became a human shield to three children and was shot dead while saving the children. For her valor, she received the highest civil award, Tamgha-e-Pakistan, from Pakistan, the Special Courage award from the United States, as well as India’s highest peacetime award for bravery, the Ashok Chakra Award, for her efforts to save passengers’ lives. Seeing no chance to escape, all five hijackers surrendered. It was later found that 20 passengers were killed, including 12 Indians, the rest from USA, Mexico, and Pakistan. Out of a total of 380 passengers, 150 were wounded while the rest stayed safe.
“That day, knowingly or unknowingly, we came together as a team and played our parts to the best of our ability,” says Massey Casper, another fellow attendant. On July 6, 1988, a Pakistani court sentenced all of them to life imprisonment. After completing their jail terms, they were released but Safarini was later arrested in Bangkok and taken to New York, where on May 13, 2005, he was sentenced to 160 years in jail. While the group leader Safarini was recaptured by the United States, the other four prisoners were deported by Pakistani authorities to Palestine in 2008. Libya was accused of sponsoring the hijacking and legal action was taken against the accused officials. Nearly 30 years after the hijack of Pan Am Flight 73 at Karachi airport, six of the plane’s crew have spoken to the media for the first time.
An Indian Hindi-language biographical thriller film, Neerja was released in 2016 depicting the hijacking and the actions of all the flight attendants on the aircraft. Neerja Bhanot was the Senior Flight Purser and the youngest recipient of the highest Indian bravery award, Ashoka Chakra. For Nupoor Abrol, a flight attendant, the hijack is far from over for him and his colleagues. Some of them are still struggling with the skeletons of the past, trying to fix the puzzle of incidents, sequences, and people who were involved in the chains of events. Survivors of such atrocities are living each day with the memories, Madhvi, a fellow steward hopes that, in speaking out, we can all connect through our survival stories and form a fabric of power and strength going forward.
The writer is an undergrad Social Sciences student at SZABIST, Islamabad.
