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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (10350)	12/25/2001 5:11:34 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 23908

Re: Many things, some of them not readily apparent, can be used as weapons. In addition, hijacking could be done with no actual weapons at all - by bluffing. Would a pilot bet hundreds of lives that a suitcase/backpack/etc. doesn't contain a bomb? What you couldn't get a trained pilot to do by either bluffing or threat is to fly his plane into a building. Haha... Mind you, hijacking's become a tough trade nowadays. Bluffing the pilots with a fake bomb, eh? Don't bet your kibbutz on that old trick --an old dog will likely call your bluff: Russian Plane Hijacked From Turkey To Saudi Arabia RIYADH, March 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Two hijackers believed to be Chechens forced a Russian charter airliner with more than 160 passengers on board to fly Thursday from Turkey to the holy city of Medina in Saudi Arabia. In Medina, the plane was surrounded by security forces and was parked away from main traffic at the airport, packed with Muslim pilgrims returning home after the annual hajj pilgrimage, said Abdul Fatah Mohammad Atta, the airport manager, the Washington Post reports. The hijackers, who commandeered the Vnukovo Airline charter plane 30 minutes after it left Istanbul's Ataturk airport for Moscow, made no immediate demands upon landing, Medina airport director Abdul Fattah Ata told AFP. The head of the kingdom's civil aviation authority, Ali al-Khalaf, said that, "no contact has been made with the hijackers." Twenty minutes after takeoff one of the hijackers forced his way into the cockpit, Interfax reported. A fight ensued, during which the plane's altitude dropped suddenly from 24,000 feet to 14,000 feet. Turkish Transport Minister Enis Oksuz said the hijackers were Chechens and were armed with knives. There were unconfirmed reports that they also had explosives on board the plane. A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin says the Kremlin assumed the kidnappers were from Chechnya, where separatists are waging a campaign for independence from Moscow, CNN adds. He said that Russian security forces were on standby to be deployed to "liberate" the plane, if necessary, and that Putin had set up a crisis headquarters, headed by the federal security services' number two, Deputy Director Vladimir Pronichev, to deal with the hijacking, it went on to say. Oksuz said that a passenger was injured when a scuffle broke out in a bid to prevent the hijackers from storming into the pilot's cabin. Airline officials told Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency the wounded passenger was in serious condition. The plane also dropped 400 meters (1,300 feet) in altitude during the fight, Oksuz said. The airliner, a Tupolev 156, passed over Cyprus and Egypt before landing in the western Saudi city of Medina, which after nearby Mecca, is Islam's holiest city. Qatari Al-Jazeerah TV says the hijackers might have chosen Medina in the belief that no foreign forces would be able to intervene since, according to Muslim law, the city is closed to all non-Muslims, reports BBC. [snip] islamonline.net As for "It's hard to come up with any logical way 3 planes could be flown into a building at all - other than that the planes had been seized by persons intent upon suicide and mass homicide.", I didn't question the hijackers' suicide+mass-murder intent. I only claim that such was their PLAN B... Again, their whole kamikaze scheme could have been carried out on international flights with the same accuracy (JFK airport ranks among the busiest ones) Gus