by Ann Williams
The night before the bomb went off, Prime Minister Thatcher was working late at her desk, preparing her speech for the next day. She was well known for her ability to function on as little as four hours’ sleep a night, and it was this trait that saved her. Had she been in her bedroom, she would almost certainly have died, since a bomb had been secretly placed in a bathroom nearby. As it was, the part of the hotel where she was working escaped the worst of the blast.
A SMOKING RUIN
After the bomb detonated, there was initial confusion. Firefighters at the local station received an emergency signal from the hotel, and at first thought the alarm had been accidentally set off by a drunk, which had often happened in the past. However, as they reached the hotel, it became clear that this was no false alarm: the hotel was a smoking ruin, its front blasted off and a pall of dust hanging in the air around it. As the emergency services began work on clearing the wreckage and leading the survivors to safety, camera crews arrived to film the event. Thus it was that viewers were able to see the prime minister’s immediate reaction to the event, as she walked out of the debris and calmly greeted the emergency workers with a polite, ‘Good morning. Thank you for coming.’
Thatcher’s ruthless determination as a political leader, and her right-wing social and economic policies, which many felt to be hardhearted and unsympathetic to all but the most able in society, had earned her the nickname ‘the Iron Lady’: in this instance, however, her stoicism in the face of disaster showed that the name had its positive aspect, too.
END OF AN ERA
As the dust – literally – began to settle, the damage that the bomb had done began to emerge. Five people were dead: Sir Anthony Berry MP, Regional Chairman Eric Taylor, and three wives of Conservative politicians (Jeanne Shattock, Roberta Wakeman and Muriel Maclean). In addition, Mary Tebbit, the wife of Cabinet Minister Norman Tebbit, had been seriously injured. She survived, but she was left disabled for the rest of her life. Scores of people were taken to hospital with lesser injuries. Considering the force of the blast, there were remarkably few casualties: however, the damage to the morale of the Conservative Party, and to the way of life of the British nation, was immense.
Up until the Brighton bombing, political rallies in Britain took place in a relatively relaxed atmosphere; often, even high-profile figures were able to move freely among the public without a great deal of supervision. However, from the day of the Brighton bombing, that changed dramatically: security was stepped up to the maximum degree, and events such as party conferences became tense, tightly controlled affairs in which the general public were kept well away from politicians and officials. Sadly, this made the events less enjoyable for everyone, politicians and public alike; but with the threat of terror attacks hanging over any major political gathering, there seemed to be no alternative.
A CAMPAIGN OF TERROR
The immediate suspects for the bombing were the Provisional IRA, who had openly pledged a campaign of terror attacks against the British government unless it withdrew troops from Northern Ireland. Later, they released a statement claiming responsibility for the attack and issuing a warning that such attacks would continue indefinitely until their objective was met.
Despite this, Prime Minister Thatcher went on to give her speech as planned that day, much to the admiration of her followers. During her speech, she took the opportunity to reiterate her stand against terrorism, declaring, ‘This attack has failed. All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail’. She continued: ‘This government will not weaken; this nation will meet the challenge; democracy will prevail.’ The prime minister received a standing ovation for her address, and it became clear that the IRA’s action, far from undermining confidence in the government, had in fact increased the nation’s sympathy towards them.
SUSPECT HUNTED DOWN
It was clear who the culprits behind the bomb attack were: but how had they managed to plant a large explosive device in the hotel and detonate it during the conference? Forensic investigation revealed that the bomb had been hidden in the bathroom of Room 629 of the hotel, a full three weeks before the explosion. A large amount of Semtex had been attached to a long-delay fuse and hidden behind a bath panel. When the hotel records were checked, it was found that a man had checked into the room at that time using a false name. A fingerprint on his hotel registration card was found, which was matched against a fingerprint found at the Rubens Hotel, London, where a similar bomb had been planted, but which had been defused before it could detonate. The two fingerprints were identical. Clearly, the same bomber was at work in both attacks.
The police also had in their possession the fingerprint of Patrick McGee, a leading member of the IRA who was known to have committed bombing offences. This imprint had been taken when McGee had been stopped as a teenager for a driving offence, decades before. The two sets of the hotel bomber’s fingerprints were now matched with this one, and they were found to be exactly the same.
THE AFTERMATH
Now the police had a suspect: their next step was to find him. Since McGee was a known IRA bomber, police had conducted surveillance on him for some time, so it was not long before he was tracked down and arrested in Glasgow. Soon afterwards, he was brought to trial, convicted, and was sentenced to life imprisonment – eight times over. However, in 1999, he was freed, after serving only 14 years of his sentence. His reprieve came as part of the Good Friday Agreement, a political initiative that aimed to address issues of conflict and national identity in Ireland for the first time. As such, the agreement was an important step in negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland: however, there were many who felt that McGee did not deserve to be released as part of this process.
In prison, McGee followed an Open University course, gaining both a BA and a PhD. However, he remained unrepentant about the bombing. He then began to correspond and meet with victims of the bombing and their relatives, most notably Jo Berry, the daughter of murdered Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry.
In a further strange twist, 20 years later, the apartment that McGee had rented during the Brighton bombing was also occupied by Abu al-Hindi who was suspected of being a top operative for Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist group al-Qaeda, and it was subsequently raided by police.
So what is the legacy of the Brighton bombing? In hindsight, it remains debatable whether the British government did, in fact, as Thatcher claimed, stand firm on the issue of terrorism. A year after the attack, the Prime Minister signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, conceding for the first time that the Republic of Ireland had a role to play in the future of Northern Ireland, and setting in motion the negotiations that eventually led to the Good Friday Agreement. Whether or not the Brighton bombing was a factor in prompting the process is difficult to say, but it is certainly the case that the IRA’s extended campaign of violence focussed attention on the need for both the British and the Irish to bring the situation to a peaceful conclusion as quickly as possible.
Twa Flight 847
He has pulled a hand-grenade pin and is ready to blow up the aircraft if he has to. We must, I repeat, we must land at Beirut. We must land at Beirut. No alternative.
Captain, Flight 847
The hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985 was one of the most chaotic and terrifying in the history of terror attacks. What should have been a short hop between Athens and Rome ended up as an epic three-day nightmare journey when two hijackers boarded the plane and forced the pilot to fly backwards and forwards between Beirut and Algiers, issuing death threats, picking up gunmen and terrorizing hostages, all the while making political demands. The crazed behaviour of the gunmen, who claimed to be suicide bombers, created an atmosphere of sheer panic, not only on the aeroplane but among airport landing staff, as the hijackers threatened to blow the plane up or crash into control towers. When an American passenger, US Navy diver Robert Stethem was murdered and his body thrown out on the tarmac at one of the plane’s stops, it became clear that the threats were for real; but eve
ntually, after their horrifying ordeal, all the other hostages were returned to safety. However, the hijackers, who belonged to the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group, were never caught and currently remain on the US’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.
HAND GRENADES AND GUNS
On the morning of Friday, June 15, 1985, Flight TWA 847 landed at Athens airport. It had come from Cairo and was headed for Rome, stopping in Athens to take on extra passengers. Many of them were American Roman Catholics, who were on a tour of the Holy Land. Three others were also among the crowd: smartly dressed young Arab men carrying shoulder bags. Only two of them got on the plane; the other had an argument with TWA staff and was not allowed to board.
Shortly after the plane took off, the two young Arabs took guns and hand grenades out of their bags and ran down to the cockpit, waving their weapons and shouting. Once there, they held up the pilot, Captain John Testrake, and ordered him to fly directly to Beirut. However, once they arrived in Beirut airspace, they found that the air controllers were refusing permission for the plane to land. The airport also blocked the runway, using buses and other vehicles. It was only when the pilot began to plead with the staff, describing the terrorists as beating passengers and about to detonate their hand grenades, that the control tower relented and let the plane land.
The hijackers then demanded that the airport staff refuel the engine, which was done. At this point, they issued their demands, which centred around the presence of Israeli forces in the Lebanon. They demanded the release of all Shi’ite Muslim prisoners captured by Israel in Lebanon and international condemnation of the Israeli presence there. They also wanted condemnation of CIA activity in the region, especially in regard to a car bombing that had recently taken place in the Beirut suburb of Bir al Abed and was rumoured to be the work of the CIA operatives. (The bomb had killed 80 people.) The hijackers wanted to speak with a spokesperson from Amal, a mainstream political group supporting the Shi’ite Muslims; Amal, however, refused to get involved with the negotiations.
SUICIDE BOMBERS
The hijackers then released 19 women and children from the aeroplane, pushing them down an emergency escape slide. Once released, the freed hostages reported that many of the remaining passengers inside the plane were hysterical and that the hostages had shot a man in the neck. However, there was nothing security services could do to help – the risks of storming the plane were too high, and no one wanted to provoke a blood bath. Thus airport staff stood helplessly by as the hijackers demanded that the pilot take off once more. This time, the destination was Algiers.
On arrival in Algerian airspace, the pilot once again had difficulty in getting permission to touch down. Naturally enough, airport staff were extremely unwilling to endanger themselves and their passengers by allowing a hijacked aeroplane to land on their runway. Officials on the ground responded to the pilot’s request to land by closing the airport.
It seemed that the hijackers and the controllers had reached stalemate, much to the anxiety of the hostages, who were now having to contemplate circling the airport until the plane ran out of fuel. However, at this stage President Reagan himself intervened, asking the Algerian government to consider the safety of the passengers and allow the plane to land. The Algerian authorities eventually relented and permission was granted, and the plane duly touched down at Algiers airport. This time, the aeroplane spent several hours on the runway, and the hijackers released 20 more passengers.
But the ordeal was not yet over. The exhausted pilot was then commanded to fly back to Beirut, and once more had to persuade air controllers there to allow him to land. He described how the plane was running out of fuel, but it was not until one of the hijackers shouted out that they were suicide bombers and would crash the tower – or the presidential palace nearby – that the Beirut airport staff wearily agreed to allow the plane to land.
BRUTAL MURDER
Back in Beirut airport, the hijackers once more demanded a spokesperson from Amal, the official Shi’ite political group; and once again, Amal declined. What happened next was horrifying: the hijackers killed an American passenger, a young man from the US Navy named Robert Stethem, beating him and then shooting him in the head. Once he was dead, his body was unceremoniously bundled out of the aeroplane onto the tarmac. The hijackers then threatened to kill another passenger, so an Amal official was immediately dispatched to the plane, along with a bodyguard.
The negotiations lasted several hours, during which time the hijackers asked for all the lights in the airport to be switched off. This request was complied with, and later the reason for it became clear: while the lights were out, the hijackers smuggled on more gunmen, and also offloaded several passengers with Israeli-sounding names. The hijackers went on to order large quantities of food, water and fuel, confirming the hostages’ worst fears that the ordeal was to continue. Then the Amal official left, and the plane took off again – back to Algiers.
Meanwhile in Athens, the third would-be hijacker, Ali Atwa, who had been prevented from boarding the plane in the first place, was by now in police custody. The hijackers demanded that he be released and flown to Algiers, threatening to kill the Greek passengers on the plane (including the well-known Greek singer Demis Roussos, who happened to be among them) if the authorities did not let him go. The terrorists’ wishes were complied with. In Algiers, the hijackers released 61 more hostages, after negotiations with Algerian officials.
By now, the crew and the remaining hostages were desperate, and the aeroplane itself was in need of maintenance, but the terrorists seemed not to care – or, frighteningly, to know what to do next. They announced that if their demands were not met this time, they would fly to an unknown destination and blow up the plane with its remaining passengers. However, in the end, they forced the pilot to fly back to Beirut again, which he did. Once on the ground, they demanded more fuel and food, along with newspapers and videos, and issued further threats.
This time, a senior Amal official, Nabih Berri, conducted negotiations with the hijackers. Berri was a politically moderate Shi’ite and a member of the Lebanese government, which at the time was in a state of disarray because of the civil war in the country. By the afternoon of Monday, June 17, the crisis showed signs of coming to an end: the hostages were taken off the plane and taken under Berri’s protection. For two further weeks, they remained captive before being driven to the Syrian border and released.
WANTED: FOR MURDER
After the hijacking, the Israelis did actually release many Shi’ite Muslims from their prisons, though they claimed that this was unconnected to the hijacking. Moreover, the four major players in the hijacking, Hassan Izz-Al-Din, Imad Mugnivah, Mohammed Ali Hammadi, and Ali Atwa, all escaped and are at large today. One of them, Hammadi, was actually caught in 1987 as he tried to smuggle explosives into Germany. As well as being tried for the smuggling, he was charged with the murder of Robert Stethem in the hijacking incident two years earlier. He was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, Hammadi was released on parole in 2005 and allowed to return to Lebanon. The US government has since demanded that he be extradited.
In the aftermath of 9/11, the four hijackers were added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, with rewards of five million dollars offered for information leading to their arrest and conviction. The political group, Hezbollah, which they claimed allegiance to, has categorically denied any involvement in the TWA Flight 847 incident. Hezbollah, which was formed in 1982 in response to the civil war in Lebanon, claims that it is an Islamic resistance group, working to improve conditions for the poor; however, the US government, along with many other Western nations, considers it to be a terrorist organization, responsible for the nightmare hijacking of TWA Flight 847, as well as for many other attacks.
Air India Flight 182
They have betrayed us, mother, they have betrayed us
Shipra Arora, flight attendant
One of the worst terror attacks in aviation hist
ory was the bombing of Air India Flight 182, which took place in 1985. It killed everyone on board: a total of 329 people, 82 of them children. Prior to the bombings of 9/11 in 2001, this was the biggest air attack ever to have taken place. Afterwards, two men were brought to trial, but they were both acquitted, after an extremely long and expensive court case. The Canadian authorities were severely criticized for the incompetent handling of the case, which took nearly 20 years to reach a conclusion, and which yielded little in the way of results. Eventually, one man, Inderjit Singh Reyat, was charged with manslaughter for his part in making the bomb used on the flight. He pleaded guilty and was convicted, but the judge went on to give him a sentence of only five years in prison. The difficulties in bringing the perpetrators of the attack to justice have led to accusations of government corruption and conspiracy; and the issue has continued, in the new millennium, to be a source of controversy in Canada.
BOMB BLAST