World

Hijacking Ends Peacefully

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 11, 2000 / 6:14 PM EST / CBS

A Chechen with a fake bomb and a rambling message surrendered Sunday after seizing a Russian airliner on a domestic flight and diverting it to Israel's southern desert. The 57 passengers and crew are all safe, officials said.

Israeli military authorities confiscated four pistols and an automatic rifle from the Vnukovo Airlines plane - but the weapons belonged to the plane's crew and security staff, said Israeli Maj. Gen. Yomtov Samia.

The hijacker, identified as Amarchenov Avmerchan, a man in his 20s, had only a dummy bomb. He had collected the other weapons on the plane after threatening to blow up the aircraft, Samia said.

In negotiations with Israeli authorities at the remote Uvda military air base, Avmerchan demanded to hold a news conference and offered up a series of rambling, incoherent statements about his intent.

He said was sent by his father to send a message "to the world and the emperor of Japan," according to Samia. He was carrying letters that "warned the world about the yellow race taking control of the white race."

Samia described the letters and the hijacker's statements as "a load of nonsense, which indicate the mental condition of the writer and of the hijacker." Avmerchan was not allowed to give a news conference.

The hijacker seized the plane Saturday night shortly after takeoff from Makhachkala, the capital of the southern Russian region of Dagestan. Instead of traveling to Moscow, the plane was diverted to Baku, Azerbaijan, where it refueled before heading toward Israel.

Avmerchan is being held in an Israeli jail until a Russian plane arrives to take him to Russia for trial.

Reuters
Finally free, a passenger
from the hijacked jet is
eager to make a phone
call.

The passengers, most of them from Dagestan, were being fed and offered medical assistance at the air base. They were to reboard the plane Sunday afternoon and fly back to Russia, the Israelis said. Many of the passengers were soccer fans traveling from Dagestan to Moscow to support their local team in a match, Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

They also included a boy, 11-year-old Apki Bakayev of Chechnya, who was suffering from leukemia and was on his way to Moscow for chemotherapy. His mother, Tamara, handed the Israelis a letter of thanks. "We will never forget Israel," it said.

Another passenger was the Dagestan treasury minister, Abdu Samat Gamidov. "I was not afraid," he said.

The crew refused to talk to reporters.

CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger reports as the hijacking ended, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's plane reversed course for a second time and headed back toward the United States, where Barak is to meet with President Presiden Clinton Sunday.

Barak left Israel on Saturday night before the hijacking began. But at a stopover in London, he decided to return to Israel to deal with the crisis. He was still in the air as the hijacking approached a resolution and decided to head back to London and on to Washington, said David Zisso, Barak's media adviser at the Defense Ministry.

The hijacking came to an end at about 9 a.m., three hours after the plane landed in Israel.

At that time, the captain of the Vnukovo Airlines plane came down a stairway and handed over weapons to Israeli security forces, said army spokesman Brig. Gen. Ron Kitrey. Avmercham, who had relinquished the weapons, came down the stairs at the same time and was met by a military vehicle that took him to the terminal building, Kitrey said.

Kitrey and other Israeli officials initially said the hijackers were acting in support of the Palestinian uprising, a six-week-old conflict that has claimed nearly 200 lives. But that information proved incorrect after negotiations with the hijacker began.

Israel initially refused the plane permission to land and was determined not to let the plane touch down at Ben-Gurion international airport near Tel Aviv, the country's main airport.

While the plane circled over the Mediterranean Sea, an Israeli Air Force jet flew nearby. Eventually, the plane was allowed to land after the Russian pilot said he was running low on fuel.

Initially, authorities in Israel, Russia and Azerbaijan said they believed there were several hijackers on board. While the plane was in Baku, officials negotiated with the Chechen hijacker and agreed to refuel the plane and send it on to Israel.

The Chechens fought a bloody independence war against Russia from 1994-96. The fighting ended in a Russian retreat and an uneasy peace treaty.

Russia sent its army into the tiny southern region again in 1999 after Islamic rebels based there invaded neighboring Dagestan. Russian forces have recaptured Chechnya, but rebels continue to wage deadly hit-and-run attacks on the Russian troops.