The following programme contains distressing scenes.
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(CRICKETS CHIRP AND THUNDER RUMBLES)
Criminal case 19504,
United States versus Zaid al-Safarini.
(GAVEL BANGS) Welcome to the United States District Court.
I invite anyone who would like to speak to the court today to do so.
We never talk about it.
35 years have gone by.
But some things stay in the memory.
Mr Maisel. Thank you, Your Honour.
We are here to remember.
Reports coming in on the apparent hijacking of a Pan American 747.
We are here to recount.
We are here to bear witness.
(SIREN WAILS)
We are here to punish.
I hope he suffers.
(SCREAMING)
We are here for justice. Safarini?
(BELL RINGS)
(RADIO CHATTER)
TWA flight 847 with 39 Americans taken hostage for 17 days.(GUNSHOT)
Rome Airport, just days after Christmas.
This incredibly dangerous and dramatic situation...
People are being held here as hostage...
(EXPLOSION)
Terrorists are not freedom fighters or anything else.
Palestine is a battlefield and it is our land.
(GUNFIRE)
A ten-year-old boy inherits the gun of the dead Fedayeen.
He could well become a terrorist.
(ALL CHANT)
As terror spreads across the Middle East,
the '80s had surely become the age of the airline attack.
I hope nothing happens. I think we'll be fine.
And, of course, Libya has a finger in most terrorist pies.
My fellow Americans, at seven o'clock this evening,
air and naval forces launched a series of strikes
against Muammar Gaddafi.
The raid on Colonel Gaddafi's headquarters in Tripoli
killing an adopted daughter. (ALL CHANT)
This pre-emptive action will provide him with incentives
and reasons to alter his criminal behaviour.
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYS QUIETLY)
Karachi was just to pick up passengers, drop off people
from Bombay, and then carry on.
I was desperate to get home.
I had a couple of friends hiking with me in Pakistan.
We had walked up to Broad Peak base camp,
which is right at the foot of K2.
Every day it was incredibly hot.
We hadn't had a decent meal.
And I felt exhausted at the end of all of that.
In the Pan Am office, a woman said,
"Yes, I have a flight from Karachi to Frankfurt to London."
It was a business-class seat. I had never flown business class.
And I thought, "This is fantastic."
(QUIET CHATTER)
I made my parents buy me a ticket to India
and spend my summer vacation there.
It was a great summer. But you wanna get back home.
I was travelling as an unaccompanied minor.
I really had to persuade my mom to send me.
I'm her only child. I told her,
"It'll be great, I'll be a good boy."
The one thing my mom was very keen on is,
"Hey, listen, I want you to come back,
so don't lose your passport, Dwijal, or else." (LAUGHS)
We were travelling to the US that day.
I finished my masters and she finished her education
and then we decided to move there for better studies.
We were sitting in the aisle seat in the middle in economy class.
My sister Sana and my brother Imran. Three of us.
I was 24.
I was 24? I was born in '62, so...
I don't know how old I was. I stopped counting my age.
(BOTH LAUGH)
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYS QUIETLY)
(MUFFLED SHOUTING)
The first thing I heard was shouting.
Move or we will kill! (GUNFIRE)
We heard automatic fire.
(GUNFIRE) Move in!
And saw the security guy holding onto a passenger.
(WOMAN SCREAMS) My first thought was
maybe the passenger was a criminal or something.
Down! Everyone sit down!
I saw a man struggling with one of the flight attendants
in the second doorway.
I didn't think of, sort of, running away.
I just stared at him and thought, "That's a man with a gun."
Everybody get down!
Behind me, in the front doorway,
there was another man in uniform with a rifle.
I thought that he was on my side. You have been hijacked!
There were four of them on board. Two guys came from the front.
Look down! Don't look at me!
And then there was two guys at the back.
They were wearing blue uniforms, light-blue uniforms.
Look down!
They look like safety guys. They are the policemen. What's happening?
Everyone sit down!
Sit down! Hands up!
I saw a man shouting, "Hands up!"
Hands up, like that. Like that.
Up! We saw, like, the hand grenade.
And that was the point when you just freeze.
Don't look at me! Higher! Up! Up!
One of the guys looked like a kid.
Nobody move!
The young hijacker, he looked into my eyes.
It's very hard for me to forget.
Don't look at me! What did I tell you?
And he was a bit harsh, you know. A bit harsh?
Hijack! Anyone move and they get hurt!
My 11-year-old brain
was used to going through drills,
fire drills at school, earthquake drills.
"Ah, it's just another drill. It's a hijack drill."
I do remember other children starting to cry
and I remember at the time priding myself cos I wasn't crying.
You, too! Look down! Don't move!
I dialled the emergency number for the cockpit.
And then I gave the code for a hijacking.
On this 747, the cockpit crew is on the upper deck.
So they would not be able to see what was happening in the main deck.
My flight engineer, he came right back in the cockpit
and was in a panic.
I felt very frightened.
(TANNOY BINGS)
And then we had the first announcement in English.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the group responsible apologise
for the inconvenience caused. Their argument is not with you.
They do not wish to hurt anyone.
But if you make any sudden movement, you will be shot."
When I saw that the ad for Pan Am said they were hiring
flight attendants from Mumbai, India,
I was excited.
Pan Am was an international carrier. It kind of made history.
There were 10,000 applications.
They had never done anything like that before.
They'd only ever had flight attendants from the US.
I was born in Bombay. I always wanted to be a flight attendant.
Pan Am was a legend.
Anywhere in the world you went, there's two names people knew.
Coca-Cola and Pan Am.
'More style, more luxury in the sky.'
It had the reputation of being one of the best airlines in the world.
So prestigious, you want to give it your best.
Because being America, you had to be super slim.
You had to look a certain way. You had to dress a certain way.
You had to act a certain way.
We were a young bunch of enthusiastic, excited young people.
I was over the moon.
A dream come true.
It was that bond that we shared.
It was about two and a half months
we had started as full-fledged crew.
I had done about eight or nine flights.
10 to 12 flights.
I just... I loved it. I just loved it.
Keep your hands up, all of you!
Don't look at me! Look down!
One of them shouted a list of instructions.
It sounded to me as if this was the leader of the terrorists.
I didn't want to look him in the eye.
Move. You, come!
He was the real deal. Quick! Come! Where are the pilots?
'An aircraft on the ground, effectively immobilised,
is the best solution to reduce risk of harm to hostages.'
We knew that we had to do everything we could
to make this airplane unusable and to exit and get out of here.
'Your possibilities for survival are greatly reduced
when the plane is airborne.'
Open the door. Open it!
'Remember to keep the hijacker out of the cockpit if possible.'
Open the door!(KNOCKS ON DOOR) Captain, can you hear me?
(MUFFLED SHOUTING)
Key. I do not have a key, sir.
(KNOCKS ON DOOR) Captain. Open the door.
I had the key all the time.
Open the door. I do not have access.
Open the door. I am asking them to open the door.
Captain, can you come to the door, - please? - Move, move!
The flimsiest door in the world.
He just pushed me aside and kicked it in.
'In security training, crew members have been told
to consider the possibilities of escaping.'
He was in shock. Like, "Now what do I do?"
You wear the hat.
I'm not the captain, I can't fly a plane, so no.
Move.
Your knowledge of past hijackings,
emergency procedures and aircraft equipment
will help you to assess the situation
and take the actions you believe to be appropriate
in order to minimise danger.
The cockpit crew had left and I knew how they would have
because we learned that in training.
I felt deserted,
that they had left us to handle this... ordeal on our own.
(SPEAKS ARABIC)
It was hard to leave the cockpit,
to leave the flight attendants with these terrorists.
You feel like you're abandoning them.
You don't know what's gonna happen, what's next.
Everybody get up. Out of your seats. Move!
Up! Move!
'Obviously, it is not possible to plan a specific course of action
for every emergency.' Move!
'Each situation is unique
and judgements appropriate to the situation must be made.'
- Move! - They wanted the passengers to be collected in one place.
Move! Sardined together in the centre.
Walk.
Hands up.
People were crowding. There was no room to move.
(GUN COCKS)
That's kind of when it hit me, like,
"OK, maybe this is not a drill."
There was an announcement made to lower the window shades.
People outside couldn't see in, we couldn't see out.
We were sealed off. (CHILD CRIES)
That sort of discomfort with extreme fear, it really gets to you.
(CHILDREN CRY)
I just wanted to get up and scream.
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYS QUIETLY)
The gentle, plinky-plonky music that they used to play
before they took off was on this endless loop.
The Entertainer
playing again and again and again.
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYS) It just played all day.
Again and again and again.
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYS) Don't look at me!
(TRIUMPHANT MUSIC)
'Now you know.
Pan Am will bring you the world's first 747.'
I did 30 years with Pan American World Airways...
...working on Boeing 707, 747,
whether it was electrical, radio, mechanical, you name it,
physically working on the airplane.
In 1982, I was made the head of Pan American for Pakistan
and Iran and Afghanistan.
On that particular day, I was at home.
They woke me up. I immediately went to the airport.
I must have arrived half an hour after the incident had taken place.
Nobody knew at that time that they were hijackers or what they want.
The door opened and one of the crew members... called out...
Please come and talk to us.
And there was nothing coming from any of the government officials
to say what we should do.
It was their responsibility.
It's not for me to do that.
The main hijacker, he wasn't willing to...
to speak over the megaphone, and I would speak on the megaphone.
Please, come and talk to us.
I thought, "If I don't go out there
and if this guys keeps calling out,
he may do something drastic...
...because no-one was coming in front of him."
Please, somebody.
So I said, "I have to go out and speak to them."
They didn't say, "Don't do it," or anything like that.
They said, "Thank you very much." (CHUCKLES)
He says where is the crew to fly the plane?
I was terrified.
I, too, wanted the captain back.
I have no idea where the crew have gone.
All I know is that they've got off the plane and gone somewhere.
I was lying, of course.
I was not going to tell him that they were in my office.
The whole idea was to buy time.
Because what we would do next would depend upon
what the government of Pakistan decided.
(DOOR CLOSES)
When I went back, they wanted to know, "Who was he? What did he..."
And I told them that it appears he's from some Middle Eastern country.
The government official instructed police
to go to every hotel in Karachi.
We had to find the passport the passenger has to give
when he checks into the hotel.
Thank God they stayed in the Taj Mahal Hotel
on the main airport road.
To work it out was easy because they had all checked in together
and they all had the same type of passport with them.
They were Palestinians.
We just got word from the Associated Press
of a hijacking tonight in Karachi, Pakistan.
A Pan Am 747, flight 73,
with 390 passenger on board.
We've just received satellite pictures
of the scene at Karachi Airport, where hijackers are holding
a Pan Am jumbo jet with nearly 400 people aboard.
There is Karachi Airport in Pakistan.
There is the aircraft.
They came back with photocopies of the passport
and I said, "Yes, this is the gentleman."
His name was Safarini.
(GUNFIRE)
Palestinian guerrillas insist that their acts of violence
are the only way they can bring world attention to their cause.
(GUNFIRE)
Abu Nidal is the most dangerous terrorist in the world at present
and his group is in many ways the most reckless and dangerous
of all the Palestinian groups. (GUNFIRE)
Rome Airport, just days after Christmas.
The nightmare voyage of the hijacked cruise ship Achille Lauro.
TWA flight 847, with 39 Americans, taken hostage for 17 days.
(GUNFIRE)
Terrorists are not guerrillas
or freedom fighters or anything else.
They are terrorists and they should be identified as such.(APPLAUSE)
(ALL SING AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM)
♪ Home of the brave ♪
(APPLAUSE)
(RADIO CRACKLES)
Safarini wanted to find out if they were on the news.
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYS QUIETLY)
(QUIET SOBBING)
Hijacking was something that happened.
I knew that this might well be the Westerners' problem.
(QUIET SOBBING)
There was a Pakistani man and his daughter sitting
just beside me on the floor.
They were probably looking at me thinking, "He's in front of us."
I was sitting next to a middle-aged man and his wife.
I just whispered to the man, "Where are you from?"
And he muttered back, "North America."
It's not something that I'm proud of, to think that, you know,
I would prefer the Americans to be in front of me,
but... when it comes down to it, that's what you do.
You work out the odds.
On the second time when I went spoke to him,
his demand was better communication.
OK!
He was not that good in English. He was asking the girl
what was I saying. And I said,
"Would it be alright if I stand on top of the stair and speak to you?"
No!
I'll give you a walkie-talkie. No!
He was angry and he said he wanted to fly to Larnaca, Cyprus.
And he said there were a lot of their friends
who were incarcerated in Larnaca.
And they want to go there to get them released.
And he said, "Where is the crew?
I want the crew to come back to fly the plane out."
I asked him, "Would you consider letting the women and children go?"
No!
And he closed the door.
The Pakistani officials' approach was,
"Let's get the crew back and let's fly the aeroplane out."
They felt that if anything happens to the aircraft
on the Pakistan soil, the Americans are going to get upset.
I was told by the officials that if need be,
they would get a volunteer crew who would fly the plane out.
And I said, "I have the responsibility
of 300 people on that plane.
Now the plane is on the ground and we can negotiate,
we can talk and solve the problem.
But once up in the air, nobody has control over that plane."
Safarini kept trying to see if he was on the news.
But there wasn't anything.
And the first person in the aisle he just grabbed and brought up front.
Medium height. Looks like somebody from India.
And they were taking him.
Safarini said, "If you don't get the pilots,
I'm going to shoot him."
(WHIMPERS)
He was so terrified and he looked to me to...
to support him, to comfort him.
I said to him, "Don't worry. I'm here. Nothing's gonna happen."
(SOBS)
He asked him, "Why are you crying? Are you a man?"
He was just... It was sad to see.
He did tell me that he was travelling with his elderly grandmother.
And asked if I would look after her should anything happen to him.
I assured him I would.
(SOBS)
I said, "If you shoot him,
it'll be very difficult to convince the government of Pakistan
to find somebody to fly the plane out."
"Give me 20 minutes, I'll go back to the officials, talk to them,
and then maybe we can sort this out."
And he said, "OK." OK!
(SOBS)
(GUNSHOT)
He shot him in the head.
And this young man fell. He slumped at my feet.
And then...
Safarini kicked his body out.
And that was the turning point.
Because he also said,
"Every 20 minutes, I'll bring one passenger and shoot them."
Now the situation was totally different.
Someone said, "They killed someone. Someone got shot."
I don't remember hearing a shot, but the fact that
they were starting to kill people made me really nervous.
"What did I do wrong?" was the biggest thought.
Like, "Oh, my God, how did I get myself in this situation?
Why did I tell my mom I wanted to go to India?"
Sitting in that seat, I felt...
...very frightened, and I felt I had to try to get control of myself.
Safarini was... furious.
"They made me do it. They made me do it.
I did not want to do it. They made me do it."
He was talking about the Americans and the Israelis.
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYS QUIETLY)
Safarini told me to collect passports.
He wanted white Americans or Israeli.
I took my British passport out of my pocket.
I thought this was a Pan Am plane and it would be full of Americans.
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYS QUIETLY)
If they were white Americans,
I just dropped their passports into their laps.
I managed to drop quite a few that way.
I heard, "Sunshine, come up front. Come back, come back."
Give me American passport.
I wanted to try and hide the passports.
I knew there was a risk. I knew the way he was standing,
he could turn at the wrong moment and see me,
but... I was trying to keep the passengers from...
...being killed.
And I hid them under the seat.
I said, "These are all Indian Americas,
so there's no white Americans on board."
He said, "Who are these white people on the plane?"
We explained to him that they were different nationalities.
You know, some were British, some Italian, there were Canadians.
His frustration was building up
because they've come into an aircraft
which doesn't have American crew,
doesn't have enough American passengers,
the cockpit crew who were there left.
He didn't know what to do now.
There's no Americans. Now what?
(TANNOY BINGS)
"Can Michael John Thexton
please make his way to the front of the plane."
I think I was... numb hearing my name.
I was trying to convince myself that there was some innocent explanation
and maybe they were gonna let me off the plane.
Erm... but... I kept coming back to the fact
that surely they were picking me out to shoot me.
And it is not really possible to describe in words how that feels.
(CAR HORNS BEEP)
The State Department in Washington is following closely
the takeover of a Pan American jumbo jet.
Four Arabic-speaking gunmen demanded to be flown to Cyprus.
The hijackers, dressed as security guards,
took over the airliner shortly after it stopped over at Karachi.
They're known to have automatic weapons with them
and have already shot one passenger through the head.
I felt... absolutely desperate.
And I said, "My parents have no-one else. Please don't hurt me."
And I tried to say something about my brother's death.
But he just waved a hand as if to say, "I haven't got time for that."
Peter was six years older than me.
He was the one who did the exciting things.
He was the doctor on an expedition to K2
in 1983
and he died of altitude sickness.
In 1986, I'd taken the summer off to go on a mountaineering expedition
to the Karakoram Himalaya.
I wanted to... I wanted to see where he died and say goodbye.
I was absolutely convinced that I was gonna die.
The main thing I thought about in that moment
was how sorry I was for my parents.
I thought about... what they had gone through,
what we had all gone through, when my brother died.
I just felt so sad
that they had lost my elder brother
and now they were gonna lose me, as well.
I whispered to one of the flight attendants,
"Please tell my family that I love them very much."
(DOOR OPENS)
He got me to open the door.
Safarini stood one of the flight attendants in that crack of daylight
and she was speaking on a megaphone
to somebody who was under the plane.
OK!
Safarini used Mike Thexton as a prod to Viraf.
He told me to tell you that...
You don't get the pilots, I'm going to shoot... Him.
(GUN COCKS)
I thought that Safarini would shoot me
and I'm just waiting for that to happen.
At that point, I think I made
one of the toughest decisions of my life.
I had no choice.
There is a staff member of mine on the aeroplane.
I told him about one of my staff,
Meherjee Kharas, an aircraft maintenance man,
trapped inside when the hijackers took the plane,
who will work the cockpit radio communication.
At least now he will be appeased
with better communication, which he wanted,
and he would calm down and not shoot anybody else.
Move.
Hello?
Flight 73. Flight 73, I can hear you.
The way it was set up was
they would call the operations office of Pan Am.
(RADIO CRACKLES) "Pan Am flight 73."
Safarini was not fluent in English.
He wanted to speak with somebody in Arabic.
So eventually, somebody said that, "OK, we found a gentleman
who used to work for Saudi Arabian Airlines
in their catering services."
And we roped him in to come and speak to him
from the operations office in Arabic.
The man had never done anything like this.
By that time, a government official was already in my operations office.
He was telling him what to tell the hijackers.
Now I'm not able to speak to him, I don't know what he's saying.
That was the most defeating thing for me.
At that point, of course, we still didn't know
exactly who these Palestinian people were
because no group had come forward to claim responsibility.
They started the killing very early on.
It must mean that they are one of the professional Middle East gangs.
Possibly the Abu Nidal gang.
Pan Am 73 in September of 1986, it's not a one-off event.
Libya has a finger in most terrorist pies in one way or another.
Reagan and Gaddafi had been confronting each other.
Like hornets in a bottle.
Gaddafi wanted to be the leader
of the radical world against the West.
This mad dog of the Middle East has a...
Reagan purposely tried to compare Gaddafi to a dog,
which in Arab culture is one of the biggest insults
you can make to a man.
The game kept getting raised up, up, up and up.
At Vienna Airport, three men threw four hand grenades,
opened up with Kalashnikov submachine guns...
Libya was behind the attack at the Rome and Vienna Airports.
Libya was targeting US service people.
The wreckage of a night club in Berlin,
a gathering place for young American soldiers.
It was proven that Libya was behind
the La Belle Disco bombing in West Berlin in '86.
President Reagan decided he had to make a statement.
And kill Gaddafi.
Fellow Americans, at seven o'clock this evening...
...air and naval forces launched a series of strikes
against Muammar Gaddafi.
By golly, we were gonna show
the mad dog of the Middle East America's back.
But the raid on Tripoli was a failure.
And if you're gonna go after the king,
you better kill him.
Gaddafi realised this was personal.
It was time for payback.
But it was a lot easier to contract out the terror.
By having one step removed, there's fewer fingerprints, less DNA.
I'll give him X million dollars,
and Abu Nidal, who himself never went on these missions,
but he would recruit young believers to carry it out.
Pan Am was the flagship US carrier.
Five months after the raid on Gaddafi,
the attack on Pan Am 73 occurred in Karachi, Pakistan.
At some point in the day, they were going to make a demand,
it wasn't going to be met, and they would shoot me.
I had this really strong thought
that you shouldn't let the sun go down on your anger.
And I would offer to shake Safarini's hand
if he came down and said he was gonna shoot me.
I knew how a British gentleman was supposed to behave
in this sort of extremity.
It was probably nonsense,
but... I found it comforting in that moment.
It's very important to make sure that the hijackers are calm
and they have trust in you. I believe that we have established
that kind of rapport. The situation remains the same.
They are wanting the American crew to come and take them away.
The official of the government who was sitting in the Pan Am office,
he was getting instructions from the government of Pakistan.
My fear was, "How long will we just communicate with them
without knowing what is the next thing we want to do?"
So I went to see the state governor,
who was at the airport.
I went to ask him to tell me what is plan B?
I was told, "I'm sorry, you can't speak to the governor just now.
He's having his lunch."
Without thinking, I just said,
"300 people's lives are at stake and he's having his lunch?"
Right in the tail of the aeroplane is the aircraft power unit.
And that unit supplies electrical power
and air-conditioning power for the aircraft
whilst it is on the ground.
The APU is designed to run for maybe two hours, three hours.
It's not designed to run for 15 hours or 16 hours.
If the APU fails,
the aeroplane will just heat up quickly
and it will be stiflingly hot inside with people unable to breathe.
And there'll be no radio contact.
No communication. Nothing.
I spoke with a government official.
I said, "We need to have a ground power unit connected
just in case the aircraft power unit shuts down."
And he said, "I don't want any piece of equipment
or vehicle near the plane."
And I have this late piece of copy that has just been handed to me.
Pakistani officials are saying that the hijackers
have offered to release the Pan Am jet's passengers
if a flight crew is brought on board and they are flown to Cyprus.
They communicated to him
that Pan Am had arranged for a volunteer crew
which was on its way from Germany, but it would take time.
(PHONES RING)
By the afternoon,
press people found out that we were in the operations room.
They were trying to get into the office.
Phone lines were inundated, non-stop, with people.
They had loved ones on the plane.
(DISTANT SIREN WAILS)
I was in graduate school in Seattle at that time.
(PHONE RINGS) It was very early hours of the morning.
(PHONE RINGS)
My brother called me from Texas.
And he said, "It appears that Pan Am's plane
has been hijacked in Karachi."
My parents were coming here for a wedding
and the first trip out of the country for both of them
was Pan Am flight 73.
They had never been outside the country, either one of them.
The first reaction is just pure disbelief.
And then there is this...
...absolute feeling of terror.
400 passengers and cabin attendants are being held at this hour.
The hijackers have shot one passenger, it seems,
through the head and threw him off the aircraft.
Passengers were boarding for a flight to New York,
but the cockpit crew escaped just before the takeover.
Isn't this a dereliction of duty? Absolutely not.
The commander of the plane did exactly what we expected him to do.
It is long... Let me finish! It's long-standing Pan Am...
Everybody was calling me. "Have you heard anything more?"
The hijackers demanded a new flight crew be brought to the plane
in exchange for some of the passengers.
And they promise that as soon as the crew is provided to them,
that they will release the passengers.
All these horrific scenes going through your mind
is absolutely terrorising.
My parents were on that plane.
After... Many, many hours... I think seven, eight hours,
they were easing off, you know.
They calmed down.
For a long time, we didn't have any food or drinks.
We were well into many hours.
Do you want a drink?
Beer? Whisky?
Er, a glass of water would be nice.
Get him a drink.
Eventually, I remember them passing out
I think they were cucumber and chutney sandwiches
or something of that sort.
It got monotonous.
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYS QUIETLY)
Your mind kind of focuses on different things.
Like, "Wow, why do they keep playing this song?
There has to be another song."
I kind of shut down a little bit.
But eventually,
I heard this kid next to me who was upset.
I wanted to make him feel better.
And playing with him made me feel better.
A moment of happiness in this really tense situation.
That little kid really helped me.
Yeah.
I was very scared, deep inside,
but, you know, I was trying to look calm.
And trying to do her elder sister's duty.
And that situation,
it was so tiring, so boring.
And my brother, Imran, started to get angry.
He was planning just to take the gun from the young guy.
My brother was six feet tall and he was a sportsman.
He was an athlete and he had all the qualities of an athlete, you know?
He said, "Let's go from this side, I'll go from that side,
and we take the gun.
They're gonna kill us anyway.
Why are they all sitting like ducks?"
And I still don't know why people in that situation,
they just sit and don't do nothing. Because they have guns.
Yeah, so maybe three people be will be dead, four.
I was scared to lose him, you know?
I did not want my little brother dead.
So I was telling him to calm down.
Just hold on.
MIKE: There was one point where Safarini sat down opposite me.
Are you married?
I have a girlfriend.
And he just said, "I'm sorry about this.
I don't like this fighting, this killing.
I would like to go out dancing, go out drinking, go out with women.
But the Americans and Israelis have stolen my country,
and without my country, these things are no good."
I wouldn't in any way condone what he was doing.
But I remember feeling...
...sorry for him. He thought that terrorism would do some good.
And yet it would only increase all of the anger and suffering.
I just felt that that was terribly sad.
But as time went on,
somehow I was beginning to have some hope
that it would all resolve itself peacefully.
Safarini seemed to be in control of the situation.
He didn't seem worried.
He said, "The captain's coming back and we're gonna fly to Cyprus.
But where do you all wanna go?" He was actually joking with us.
And he named Bangkok.
"Cos I can take you all anywhere."
(CORK POPS)
He said, "It's my 24th birthday."
And he asked for me to open a bottle of champagne.
Cheers.
Champagne is normally for good times.
But I felt I had to drink with him.
He started flirting.
He asked me if I would go to the disco with him if he came to Mumbai.
I saw a belt around his waist.
I asked what that was and he said,
"This has been given to me by my mother to prevent pain."
It definitely looked like it contained enough explosives
to blow up the entire plane.
That was the most stressful drink of my life.
(ALARM BLARES) - What is this? - It's OK!
Suddenly, there was a loud, jarring sound.
Go! Go! OK.
I told him, "It's OK. It's just someone in the toilet smoking."
(ALARM BLARES)
Safarini's mood got a lot worse.
He took me into the cockpit.
Soldier.
He was afraid of snipers outside.
Good morning. Pan American flight 73,
hijacked about 12 hours ago by four gunmen, is still on the ground...
Back to the hijack, and Pan Am in London has issued a telephone number
for anyone concerned about passengers on the Karachi jet.
I suggested we listen to his demand
and put lights all around the plane so that they'd know
there is no untoward incident planned to try and storm the plane.
The officials wouldn't listen.
At this point, I think he believed that
perhaps the negotiators are stalling.
Safarini was upset.
"Clipper 73."
When the cockpit radio came on...
"Clipper 73, come in, please."
...he told me, "Ignore it."
Clipper 73, come in, please.
At that point, I knew... Come in, please.
...that time was running out.
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYS QUIETLY)
After running for 15 hours or so...
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYS QUIETLY)
...the power unit finally shut down.
(WHIRRING AND BEEPING)
Move! What is this?
Kharas explained the power had failed
and that the emergency lighting
would not last for longer than 15 minutes,
after which it would not be possible to restore the lights at all
and there would be no power for the plane to take off.
There was a very bright light
right above the first officer's seat.
Cover! Cover the light!
And Safarini believed that people from the outside
could see very clearly into the cockpit.
(PHONE RINGS) Clipper 73.
They said, "The aircraft is not responding when we are calling out.
Maybe the APU has failed,
which means there is no way to talk to the hijackers."
I said, "I've got to take a look."
Out!
Wake up!
Move!
The music had stopped, the hiss of the air-conditioning had stopped,
and the lights were definitely dimmer. And it was getting hotter.
Hey.
Move it! Up, up!
Jamal shook me awake, - kept pushing me. - Go!
Sit down! And everyone be quiet!
Get up. Get back.
Safarini saw me right in front and he told me to go behind,
so I climbed over two people,
and he made me go further behind.
I said, "Is this OK?" And he says, "Yes, sit."
I saw a window seat this time
and I thought, "I'm back with the others.
I stand the same chance as anybody.
This is unbelievable."
I sat down on the floor with Kharas seated in front of me.
It became challenging to even take a nice, fresh breath of air.
And I just wanted to get out of there.
I remember the lights flickering.
And then all of a sudden, they shut off.
(HIJACKERS SPEAK ARABIC)
You, up.
Safarini said, "Make an announcement.
I am trying to restore the lights."
Please stay quiet and do not move.
Sit.
When I got there, the airplane was in total darkness.
I said, "Let's put the tarmac lights on
so they know that there's nothing happening."
He said, "There is no switches. We cut the wire to put the lights off."
An older lady leaned forward to me and very quietly said...
..."They're going to kill us now, aren't they?"
I patted her arm and I said,
"No, no. It's going to be alright."
Everybody was bracing themselves
for whatever it was that was going to happen.
(EXHALES)
And I got as low in the seat as I could get.
I prayed.
I prayed continuously.
My brother, he told me,
"Just pray to God and remember our parents.
This is it. We are gonna die."
I needed to convince Safarini
that we are doing everything possible to get the power on again.
(HIJACKERS SPEAK ARABIC)
(GUN COCKS AND PASSENGERS SCREAM)
(GUN COCKS)
(GUNFIRE AND SCREAMING)
I instinctively... dropped
in between my seat and the seat in front of me.
Cos... I didn't know what was happening.
And I felt gun shells hitting my arm.
I looked up and that's when I saw
that the hijacker was shooting...
everywhere, aimlessly.
(GUNFIRE AND SCREAMING)
The passengers were howling.
It was like mass howling. It was unearthly.
The young hijacker...
(GUNFIRE AND SCREAMING)..I saw him throwing the hand grenade on us.
And the hand grenades they threw on our feet.
My brother, he was sitting next to me.
My leg and his leg, we were all, like, you know,
blown up with the hand grenade.
And... I thought I'm dead.
(EXPLOSION AND GUNFIRE) I thought,
"This it is. I don't think I'm gonna make it."
I looked down and I saw my, erm...
...co-worker, the Pan Am maintenance man, Kharas...
...was no more.
(GUNFIRE AND SCREAMING) Someone started climbing over me
to get into the aisle.
So I reached for the little boy who I was playing with.
As I reached out for him, I just saw him laying there,
like he was sleeping.
(GUNFIRE AND SCREAMING) I just blocked him out of my mind.
(EXPLOSION) And I just kept going.
I feel, erm... guilty.
Like, "Why did I live and he didn't?"
The hijackers began throwing hand grenades
and firing into the helpless people huddled together.
When I opened my eyes, I was alive and in so much pain.
You can imagine, if a hand grenade blew up on your feet.
And then I try to get up from my seat... Where was I at that time?
You were on the seat. All of you were, like, fainted.
When the firing stopped, there were cries of pain
that could be heard throughout the cabin.
People started getting up and running towards the doors.
I just remember everyone
just crowding around the door, trying to get it open.
Somebody, I don't know who, emergency open
and the people jump out.
So I drag her and throw her from the chute.
It was easy for me because she was petite and young.
And my brother was six feet tall.
It was not easy to drag him,
but I didn't give up.
Love make you very strong.
We got out as fast as we could,
either down the chutes or onto the wing and jumping off the edge
and then...
I saw a gentleman leapt off the wing and he fell
and I hear him screaming really loud as he hit the ground.
When I was on the wing, I saw...
...two of the hijackers
jump off into the slide,
along with the passengers.
They threw all their weapons to try and escape as a passenger.
(SIREN WAILS)
I took my two kids and I hid them under the chair.
And then I could see their legs and hands,
so I didn't want them to get hurt on their legs and hands,
so I laid myself on top of...
In the terminal building, it was just chaos.
They took me to a hall area, which...
which... was just benches laid out
and bodies on it covered,
and they pulled back every sheet
to see if any of them was a hijacker.
And none of them were.
Two of the terrorists tried to escape.
They were set upon and beaten by passengers on the ground
before being taken into custody by Pakistani police.
They said they had caught some people.
And they take me to this truck...
...with these three guys.
And they made them stand up, look at me, and I identified them.
Then they took me to identify the fourth guy.
Safarini was in hospital, where they wheeled him out.
Safarini was injured.
Shot by one of his own men.
At the hospital, it was a scene of complete chaos.
(BABY CRIES)
Doctors and nurses were dealing with patients
on the floor and on beds.
When they were trying to take out the shrapnel from my back,
I had cardiac arrest and they announced me clinically dead.
(BABY CRIES)
I saw a flight attendant, Neerja, on the floor
and I went to a doctor and I tugged at his sleeve and I said,
"Come and help me." And he said, "Everybody here is a critical case."
(HORNS BEEP)
I kept calling Karachi to get some information.
Eventually, I got a call
that said, "Your parents are safe."
After I... got the news, it was this tremendous relief.
I can still remember thinking, "This is not real.
I'm going to wake up in a minute and I'll be back on that plane."
It's one of the biggest medical evacuations Pakistan has ever seen.
Many still speechless in shock.
Also on the Bombay flight, the remains of one of the dead,
as Indian hostess called Neerja,
her chipboard coffin shuddering up the conveyer belt into the hold.
She was trying to help two children to get out
while the shooting was taking place.
She was trying to get them out through the door.
And in the process, she got shot.
Saturday morning, my mother called me.
She said, very calm...
...very dignified, and she said...
..."Your father's life story has come to an end."
That was the first thing out of her mouth.
And I kept saying, "Where is he? Where is he?"
And she said, "He is no more."
She said, "I don't want you to get upset.
It'll hurt me more than it'll hurt you if you lose it.
You hang in there." And...
I'll take a drink of water.
We keep asking everyone, "How is Imran? How is Imran?"
And later on, we find out that the whole hospital
was guided not to tell us that he is no more with us.
Some of the shrapnels go into his head.
He got heart attack and he died.
During that time, I thought he's alive.
We went to the Sheraton
where they had a copy of the local paper.
The headline was something like,
"Daring commando raid frees hijack passengers."
Army commandos approached the aircraft.
The hijackers apparently saw them and began shooting.
And the commandos stormed the plane.
After hearing gunfire and explosions,
Pakistani commandos stormed the stricken plane,
firing their weapons.
There were no commandos there to save us.
No, there were no security forces around the airplane.
I looked when I came out, I looked under the airplane and on the sides.
There was no Pakistani action that I know of.
They didn't. That's all a fallacy. No commandos came on.
They do say that a lie goes round the world
before the truth has got its trousers on.
It turns out that Pakistani commandos
were actually storming the plane at the same time
the panicked passengers were rushing through the emergency doors.
Please come here.
Oh, this is the press conference.
How could four hijackers inside the plane,
busy shooting at passengers, hold back your commandos,
who you'd had all day to get into place?
Don't mind it, but I haven't understood a word from your accent.
Could somebody speak in a different accent and let me...
At the point when the shooting started,
the commandos, they were half a mile away from the aircraft.
So by the time they would... get up
and pick up their weapons and get into a bus and come there,
it was all over.
With me now is Pakistan's ambassador to London.
There have been criticisms, largely that it was 25 minutes
before your special guys actually got on the plane.
I spoke to the Secretary of Defence and he told me
that it took them exactly three minutes
to reach the plane
and to save the people.
Ambassador, we must stop there. Thank you so much for joining us.
President Zia was full of praise for the way his security forces
handled the hijack crisis.
The Pakistani government at the time saw Pan Am 73 as an embarrassment
that it took place on their watch, if you will.
And they don't like to be embarrassed.
They deal with it by trying to cover it up and make it go away.
I'm very proud of them because I think the handling was professional,
it was bravely handled,
and the result was totally what we expected.
The FBI turned up in Karachi and interviewed people.
But General Zia was very firm
that the Pakistanis would deal with the hijackers.
We have now a very effective law,
the punishment of which is death sentence.
So I was aware of the trial
and I was aware that they had been found guilty
and they were given a death sentence.
I just assumed that that was how it was going to stay.
But after various reductions, that just came down to being
a 15-year sentence, a very short time for all those deaths.
Libya today categorically denied
that it was involved in any way with the Karachi hijacking.
Politics, it's a game with rules that are not written down.
And that's why professional diplomats and politicians play it.
Administration officials have been very cautious
about linking Libya to the Pan Am hijacking.
Libya and Colonel Gaddafi, we cannot connect this one at this time.
- Are you gonna look, however? - Well, we will always be, er, vigilant
in our efforts to find out who commits acts of terrorism,
to prevent them and...
Why was the US hesitant to point to Libya as the culprit in Pan Am 73?
Optics. Put it this way, I think it was embarrassing for Ronald Reagan.
You know, trying to kill Gaddafi in Tripoli
was a failure.
I thought you taught Gaddafi a lesson,
but three months later, he's, you know, doing this stuff.
(CHEERING)
But remember what Pan Am 73 was supposed to be.
It wasn't supposed to be carnage on the ground in Karachi, Pakistan.
That is not what the terrorists wanted to do.
They wanted to hijack a jumbo jet loaded with fuel and passengers,
crash it into a symbolic target
in a spectacular suicide mission, if you will,
and do it in a way that it'll be broadcast around the world,
in every newspaper and television station, for months and years.
Clearly Pan Am 73, in hindsight,
was a forerunner of the attacks of September 11.
(PLANE ENGINE WHIRRS)
(HIGH-PITCHED WHISTLE)
(THUNDER RUMBLES)
(TANNOY BINGS)
(INDISTINCT ANNOUNCEMENT)
We've arrested a known terrorist,
Zaid Hassan Safarini.
He's not affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
Yet he's an example
of the wider war on terrorism and what we intend to do.
Safarini?
We got him and today the United States of America
will charge him with murder.
(APPLAUSE)
We travelled to Washington
for his hearing.
They were calling upon all survivors,
witnesses,
family members, crew,
to testify in court.
I thought, "I have to see what happens to him.
He was the man that was going to shoot me."
I didn't wanna go.
I didn't want to see his face.
I wanted him to be dead.
Defendant Safarini is directly responsible
for the deaths of 20 people,
the attempted murder of about 358 other hostages,
and the injury of at least 100 surviving passengers and crew.
It was a shock to see Safarini in shackles, surrounded by marshals.
He looked very different.
I thought he looked a pathetic, broken man.
I do remember calling him a murderer
and how he cost the lives of many people,
and how he just didn't hurt them,
he hurt their loved ones and their family.
He spoke with a dead voice,
like, "I am sorry for what happened, blah, blah."
Like, no remorse at all.
I don't think that any apology that he could've given
would have remotely satisfied
the people who were so angry with him.
I'll be very honest, I didn't wish a death penalty for him,
simply because that would be too sweet and too sudden for him.
Mr Safarini, you have pleaded guilty.
Are you prepared to be sentenced?
The sentence that he was given,
it almost sounds medieval.
The total agreed-upon sentence...
...is 160 years in prison.
(GAVEL BANGS)
I'm disappointed. I think he deserves worse.
Tell us now what you told the court
about what you'd like to do with the defendant.
No, not on camera.
He's gonna live his life thinking about why he's there.
And I hope he suffers.
I got a call from several family members.
Effectively, what I do is I pursue claims
against sovereign governments.
They came to me and said, "We've read about you, heard about you.
Do you think you could take on our case against Libya for PA73?
That's what we want. Justice.
We want a judge to say Libya did it."
And we were fairly close to going to trial.
But... there's a bigger diplomatic stage beyond the courtroom.
Politics will trump justice.
And after 9/11, things changed dramatically.
Blair made his trip to the desert to welcome Muammar Gaddafi
back in from the cold.
Gaddafi had got out of the terrorism business.
He actually was cooperating on going after Al-Qaeda.
And he was back on the world stage. Extraordinary. A mass murderer.
Gaddafi gave up his WMD and he gave the West what it wanted.
Clean oil, easy to get, cheap to transport.
You now have Gaddafi as a source of intel
rather than as the focus of the intel.
(CAMERAS CLICK)
In 2008, President Bush and Gaddafi entered into
a $1.5 billion settlement
to resolve all pending cases against Libya.
(APPLAUSE)
Pan Am 73 was one of them,
but only Americans are included in the settlement.
How about food and something to drink?
Passengers must have been asking plenty of questions.
From the beginning, there was no panic.
Passengers were calm and supportive of our efforts.
We were, as much as it was possible, in low voices,
keeping passengers... (VOICE FADES)
They had an awards ceremony where the hijack crew got a pen.
It has the Pan Am logo on it.
A gift for your... Yeah. For...
For whatever. Our bravery.
I don't know what it was for. It was just a gesture.
And, erm... yep, I've kept it all these years.
And this is a letter from one of the passengers.
"I want you to know how appreciative I am
of the courageous action you took
in hiding the passports of the American passengers.
My sincere thanks for your quick thinking and bravery.
I hope to hear from you soon."
That's a nice letter. Yeah, it is. It was... It was nice.
I didn't expect anything like that.
Because everyone was so traumatised, you know.
But it... it was nice of him.
I get flashbacks of what happened
and I... think a lot of it was guilt.
And I think that was the most difficult thing to carry on with.
Not because I survived, but because I couldn't do more.
And these are some letters that I wrote to and received
from Zaid Safarini in jail.
In the supermax facility.
I wrote, really, because I thought
if he were to say publicly
that he now realised it was a mistake,
that might discourage somebody, somewhere
from doing something similar. Erm...
I asked him the questions that I wanted answers to.
I've never understood what triggered the end of the hijack
and the violence.
He said, "I will be more than glad
to discuss with you any subject you wish to talk about.
I strongly believe this is your basic right to know everything.
If you wish, you can send me your phone number
and I will try to call you one day."
(PHONE BUZZES)
Yes.
I just wonder, what did you hope would happen?"Ohh."
Do you remember?
I was expecting that you would shoot me.
And you didn't, you know.
You put me back with the others.
My brother had died in the mountains, yes.
Wow.
Thank you, Zaid. Goodbye. "Bye-bye."
It doesn't really change how awful it was
for all those people. It just...
...makes me feel that my brother saved my life.
This is a picture of my brother, Imran.
I named my son after my brother
and he has all the qualities of my brother.
- He's very brave. - Oh, my God. He's something else. (CHUCKLES)
Sometimes it feels like he has his soul.
He's very bold.
He's very kind, compassionate. And...
...actually, he's the reason I am alive.
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