An Act of "Patriotism"

At Beirut's busy international airport, security measures include dogs trained to sniff hashish and electronic devices designed to detect metallic objects. One morning last week the electronic eyes were not working as well as the canine noses, and six young Arab passengers, all students at American University of Beirut, sauntered on to Olympic Airways' Athens-bound Flight 255 toting five pistols, two hand grenades and a submachine gun.

An hour aloft, as the passengers were finishing breakfast, Abed Said Malhas and his pretty companion Siham Saadi sprang from their first class seats and forced a stewardess at pistol point toward the cockpit. In the tourist cabin, the other four terrorists whipped out guns and told the passengers: "This is a hijack. We have a plan. We will land in Athens. If our conditions are met, no one will be hurt." The hijackers' conditions: the immediate release of seven Arab terrorists currently in Greek prisons, or the plane would be blown up.

Falling Stock. Greek Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Stylianos Pattakos sped to the airport along with the Lebanese ambassador to Greece. Hurrying to the control tower, Pattakos established radio contact with the plane, which had landed and taxied to an open space 250 yds. away. The hijackers threatened to shoot anyone who approached.

At first Pattakos refused to negotiate with what he called "air pirates--blackmailers who, under the pretext of patriotism, violate international law." For nearly eight hours Arab ambassadors, Red Cross officials and even Aristotle Onassis, owner of Olympic Airways, argued and pleaded with the adamant hijackers. At one point Onassis offered himself as hostage instead of the 47 terrified passengers, but the air pirates spurned his offer. "They said I was only one while the passengers were many," he said later. "It seems my stock is falling." Arab ambassadors who were summoned to the airport urged the hijackers to release the passengers, but to no avail. As temperatures rose in the broiling midday sun, tension mounted in the sweltering plane. The hijackers, at first confident and polite, became edgy and fingered their weapons menacingly. "The girl was doing things like getting water for passengers," recalled one man who was aboard the plane. "But as time passed the hijackers' mood changed and they got angry. We were told to keep quiet and stay in our seats with the safety belts fastened."

Finally Pattakos was forced to yield, and promised to release the seven terrorists to the Red Cross within one month. The hijackers' guarantee was a note from Onassis, who walked out to the Boeing 727 once the agreement had been reached. As he recounted it: "I said, 'Personally, I give you my assurances.' Then I gave them a signed note. I talked while a guy held a tommy gun pointed at me."

The seven who are to be released: two Palestinians serving sentences for machine-gunning an El Al airliner in Athens in 1968, killing an Israeli passenger; two Jordanian fedayeen who went on trial in Athens last week for the premeditated murder of a two-year-old Greek child during a grenade attack on the El Al booking office last November; and three Lebanese sentenced for attempting to hijack a TWA jet last December. During part of the negotiations last week, Christos Nastos, father of the murdered Greek child, roamed through the airport shouting "My son's murderers must not go free!"

But they will. The exhausted passengers were allowed to disembark, the plane was refueled and took off with six of the Greek crew and a Red Cross official as hostages. The hijackers were so anxious to leave Athens that the plane took off with passengers' luggage still aboard. In Cairo, the hijackers were welcomed as "patriots" by a special representative of President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Later the same night the plane and its crew returned to Athens.

Not Criminals. Credit for the exploit was claimed by Bahjat Abu Gharbiyah, leader of the Amman-based Popular Struggle Front, one of the smallest of the many fedayeen groups. The action, he said, was aimed at compelling the Greek government to treat Palestinians who attack Israeli airliners "as revolutionaries, not common criminals." Whatever they are called, the "patriots" have attacked eleven Israeli, Swiss, Greek, Austrian and American planes in the last two years. Their toll: 51 civilians of many nationalities dead and 16 injured.

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