The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks Read Free

In addition, one incident—the October 13, 1977, Landshut Hijacking and GSG 9 Rescue in Mogadishu—appears twice on the list, because it was a joint operation. To provide context for the environments in which these attacks took place, discussions of each decade introduce that book section.

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The 1960s
    The decade’s worst depredations, while chilling for their time, have all fallen off the overall list for the half-century. A 50 Worst list for the decade of the 1960s could include armed attacks by Algerian insurgents, whose domestic attacks against the continuation of French colonial rule on occasion spilled over into the metropole. Algerian independence was seen by many insurgent theorists as evidence of the possibility of a successful terrorism campaign. Palestinian terrorism, particularly with the establishment of Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, began to take root in Israel and the occupied territories, and later spread into the rest of the world by the early 1970s. The decade’s 50 Worst could also include examples from the rash of bombings by leftist groups in the United States—including a failed Weather Underground attempt to bomb the U.S. Capitol—and Western Europe, along with the attacks by various Latin American revolutionary groups encouraged by the success of Fidel Castro’s insurgent takeover of the reins of power in Cuba.
    Many of these groups resorted to aerial hijacking as an excellent method of publicizing their causes by attracting media attention to a telegenic crisis du jour. Copycats, including mentally disturbed individuals, passengers who wanted to upgrade to a first-class flight to Havana, and domestic U.S. black revolutionaries and their white sympathizers, also added to the rolls of the hijackers. The increase of aerial hijackings, which was then viewed by governments as one of the major sources of nonstate threats to the security of its citizens, led to tentative steps by governments to bolster the defensive side of the issue. Hijackings were not yet viewed as a terrorism problem since the majority of attacks were comparatively nonviolent take-me-to-Cuba and take-me-to-Miami capers. From 1968 through 1972, the U.S. Department of Transportation logged 364 hijackings around the world.
    The U.S. administration became fed up after eight planes were hijacked to Cuba in January 1969. The Federal Aviation Administration created the Task Force on the Deterrence of Air Piracy, which developed a hijacker profile for use in screening passengers. Magnetometers (metal detectors) were also introduced at the end of the decade.
    The international community chipped in with several antihijacking conventions. In 1963, International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) drafted the Convention on Offenses and Certain Other Acts Committed on Board Aircraft (more commonly referred to as the Tokyo Convention), which required states to promptly return hijacked aircraft and passengers. The convention was silent on the fate of the hijackers. The ICAO next met in The Hague, Netherlands, to create the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft (Hague Convention), which called for states to extradite or try hijackers. The convention deemed hijacking a criminal rather than a political act. In December 1970, fifty nations signed on, including the United States. The ICAO also drafted a Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation, which dealt with acts on the ground against aircraft in service. The Montreal Convention was open for signature in 1971 and went into force in 1973.
    Nonterrorist hijackings decreased following the coming into force of the three conventions. Terrorists, however, upped the ante, making their attacks increasingly more deadly and diverting planes to countries whose regimes viewed them as conducting legitimate political acts, vice terrorist attacks, and thus making