Hijack Victims: We Are Continuously Surrounded

Arthur and Deborah Toga of St. Louis had boarded TWA Flight 847 in Athens a week earlier, at the end of a three-week vacation in Europe, because another flight had been canceled. He is an assistant professor of neurology, she a psychiatric nurse who is seven months pregnant. After she was released by the hijackers in Algiers, she flew to the U.S. to await news of her husband at the home of his parents in Lexington, Mass. In chaotic Beirut last week, Arthur Toga, 32, tried to describe his feelings. “I fear for her, not knowing about my well-being, so I think about that a great deal,” he said. “I think about the fact that I don’t know how long we’re going to be here. I feel very helpless because wheels that are turning behind my back to facilitate our release are totally beyond my . . . I can do nothing about it.”

The group of 40 Americans to which Toga suddenly belonged was both ordinary and exemplary. All were men who ranged in age from early 20s to mid-60s. Aside from the three crew members, the group included an architect, a travel agent, a retired truck driver, a real estate developer and two priests. One man owned a sports-car dealership, another a business called Window Covers to Go. Three were returning from their honeymoons; others were going home to family reunions or graduations. If the passengers from Flight 847 had anything in common, it was probably a gnawing feeling shared by all: How did this ever happen to me?

In the course of the week, their predicament had changed dramatically. In the beginning, they were caught in a classic political hijacking, at the mercy of two desperate and determined men armed with grenades and a 9-mm pistol. By the third day, however, after more than 100 of the plane’s original occupants had been released as the Boeing 727 zigzagged back and forth between Beirut and Algiers, they had become political hostages to a cause that few had previously known much, if anything, about.

Exactly what had happened to effect this transformation was not fully known. The original two hijackers were tough-minded men who at times had dealt savagely — and in one case murderously — with their charges. But the ten to twelve gunmen who came aboard during the plane’s second stopover in Beirut were of a different stripe: they were militiamen of the mainstream Amal organization, far friendlier than the original terrorists, and they seemed to influence the very character of the hijacking. When Flight 847 landed at Beirut on Sunday for the third time in as many days, the remaining passengers were taken to unknown locations, probably in the poor Shi’ite neighborhoods around the airport. The three crewmen were kept on the plane, under heavy guard.

All week long, there was special concern for a group of passengers, ranging in number between six and ten, who had been removed from the plane during its second Beirut stopover. There were reports that they were in the hands of the fanatical, pro-Iranian Hizballah (Party of God) organization, and had been moved from Beirut to Baalbek in the Syrian-dominated Bekaa Valley. This region has been a base for Islamic extremist groups over the past three years, and is thought to be the area where some of the seven American, one British and four French kidnap victims are currently being held.

The remaining hostages from Flight 847 were installed at one or more locations. “We eat, we sleep, we smoke,” said Peter Hill, 57, of Hoffman Estates, Ill., at the midweek news conference given by five of the hostages under the watchful eyes of their captors. The setting was grimly appropriate for a hostage press conference. Nearby were three refugee camps where Palestinian defenders and Amal militiamen have been locked in bloody combat for more than a month. Several miles to the north, artillery duels were flaring sporadically along the “green line” dividing East and West Beirut.

The hostages’ putative host was Amal Leader Nabih Berri, who is negotiating on behalf of the hijackers. One of his first efforts at conciliation was mildly encouraging. He announced on Tuesday that he had talked the hijackers into releasing three “Greeks,” including Folk Singer Demis Roussos. The others turned out to be the singer’s American secretary, Pamela Smith, and an American of Greek descent, Arthur Targotsidis, 18, of Brockton, Mass. Roussos burbled with good feelings as he told reporters that the gunmen were “so nice to me, I cannot tell you.” In fact, said Roussos, he had sung for his captors at their request, and they had presented him with a cake on his 39th birthday, which had occurred on the second day of the hijacking.

But all was not sweetness and light at Beirut airport. A gunman aboard the plane had told the Beirut tower that if there was no progress in the negotiations by the next morning, the terrorists would order the explosives- laden jetliner to be flown to Israel and blown up over Tel Aviv. An Amal militiaman scolded the gunman and ordered him “not to make any such threats.” There were reports from Israel that had the hijackers tried to take off again in the TWA plane, the Israelis would have fired at the 727’s tail section from a missile boat offshore, hoping to incapacitate the plane without killing everyone aboard.

On Wednesday reporters from the French news agency Agence France Presse and ABC News were invited by militiamen to walk out onto the tarmac to have a chat with TWA Captain John Testrake, 57, pilot of the ill-fated Flight 847. He sat in the cockpit, looking fit but somewhat in need of a shave, with a pistol- toting gunman at his side. Not far away was the hulk of a Jordanian airliner destroyed by Shi’ite terrorists a week earlier.

Testrake warned that any rescue attempt by the U.S. would be futile. Said he: “I think we’d all be dead men because we are continuously surrounded by many, many guards.” He confirmed that the two original hijackers were nowhere to be seen, adding, “The gunmen are constantly changing.” Testrake said he wanted his family and friends to know “that the Lord has taken good care of us so far, and he has seen us through many trying times and will see us through to the end.” At one point, a gunman fired through a window to keep other reporters and photographers away. Flight Engineer Benjamin Zimmermann, 45, of Cascade, Idaho, sent greetings to his wife, children and father. Zimmermann, who is a Lutheran pastor, evidently had not been told that his father, the Rev. Elmer Zimmermann, had died in St. Louis four days earlier while attending a prayer vigil for his son.

A gunman later requested that three toothbrushes, toothpaste and soap be sent to the plane for Testrake, Zimmermann and the third crewman, First Officer Phillip Maresca of Salt Lake City. Every day, the hijackers called the control tower for food and newspapers, as if ordering from room service. “What’s for lunch?” they asked. “Cheese and jam sandwiches,” the tower replied on one occasion. “Oh, no,” the hijacker complained. “No more cheese and jam sandwiches. We want meat, something with meat.” Airport authorities reportedly sent 80 portions of chicken and rice, 80 salads and 80 coconut cakes to the plane. Later in the week, they sent 80 small jars of jam, 80 packs of butter and the same number of bread rolls. In his cockpit interview, Testrake remarked: “They sometimes bring us airline food and sometimes Lebanese food. I’d say on the whole the food’s O.K.”

The Testrake interview had a side effect that the militiamen had not counted on: it stirred up the crowd of foreign journalists on hand. They pressed harder for advantage and constantly confronted the rifle barrels of the angry gunmen. The most remarkable case was that of a Lebanese Shi’ite driver working for Newsweek. The driver rode onto the tarmac in a food van and, pretending to be a relative of one of the hijackers, proceeded to the steps of the plane. “Trick! Journalist!” a gunman screamed as he spotted the man’s camera. As the driver fled from the scene, the gunman shot at him, then turned his AK-47 assault rifle on a crowd of journalists and photographers on the balcony of the terminal, firing over their heads. “What is this? Are you playing tricks with us?” an angry hijacker later demanded of the control-tower operator. “I want all newsmen out. One has filmed me shooting. I want that film confiscated and sent to the plane.”

Berri had promised that he would try to arrange for reporters to meet with the hostages, and on Thursday he staged the press conference at the airport featuring five of the 40 captive Americans. The five were Allyn Conwell, 39, of Houston, Thomas Cullins, 42, of Burlington, Vt., Vincente Garza, 53, of Laredo, Texas, Peter Hill and Arthur Toga. The political purpose of the event was transparent: Conwell read a statement urging President Reagan not to try to rescue the hostages by military means. He also called for the release of the 776 Shi’ite detainees in Israel “who undoubtedly have as equal and as strong a desire to go home as we do.” When asked if he felt that he and the other hostages were being held by the same Shi’ite faction as the one the original hijackers belonged to, Conwell replied, “There is an abrupt change of attitude and very sincere difference in the way the people who are holding us now behave, relate to us and treat us, and I am told that they are indeed a different group of people. I have faith in that. I pray to God that that’s correct.”

Conwell said that he had seen all the hostages in Beirut and that all were in good health, although he acknowledged that they were under “strain and tension.” It was later reported, however, that one of the hostages, Jimmy Dell Palmer, 48, of Little Rock, had been taken to a hospital for examination. Palmer suffers from high blood pressure and a heart condition, and his worried family had sent medicine to him in Beirut.

Apart from the political statements, the news conference offered many insights into how the hostages were faring. Conwell seemed to be holding up the best, perhaps because he is an experienced hand in the Middle East, having spent much of the past decade in Arab and Asian countries working for oil service companies. In introducing himself, Conwell said, “My family is in Corfu, Greece. I send them my love, my affections and hope to God that they’re strong and that they can wait for me to get back home. I’m ready.” Cullins also addressed his family, telling them, “We’re in good shape, we’re healthy, we’re strong. We’ve been treated well, and God willing, we’ll be home soon.” Hill, mentioning his children Nina, Roxanne and Paul, said, “I have every confidence that it will only be a short while before we’re back in each other’s arms.” Garza told his family that he was well and had no special needs. Said Toga: “I miss my wife very much. I want to go home . . . I am healthy, I’m being taken care of, but I want to go home very badly.”

The five hostages sat at a long table covered with a white tablecloth and plates of cake and bottles of water. Some of the hostages seemed ill at ease in the company of their captors, who stood behind them in camouflage fatigues, some armed with automatic weapons. Conwell and others dodged questions that they regarded as sensitive, particularly those concerning the group of hostages who were being kept separately.

Concerned about the negotiations, Hill then asked the reporters present, “Do you know what the hell is going on?” When told that President Reagan had said he would not make a request to Israel to release its detainees, Hill was asked his reaction. Said he: “I need to reflect on that. I don’t want to make a comment at this time.” Conwell closed the meeting with a plea for a quick settlement. “If a person is not a legitimate prisoner of war or a prisoner due to other crimes, let’s all use common sense,” he said. “Let’s get innocent people where they belong — with their loved ones.”

Late in the week the airport was the scene of a mass rally by hundreds of fist-shaking Shi’ite marchers organized by Hizballah. In presumably conscious imitation of the Shi’ite demonstrations outside the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and 1980, the militants trampled and burned an American flag and chanted, “Death to Israel and America, the Great Satan.” Though their hatred of the U.S. was genuine enough, one purpose of their demonstration in the early summer heat was to steal a little thunder from Amal, with whom they are in conflict for the leadership of Lebanon’s 1 million Shi’ite Muslims.

The chances are that the mediaconscious terrorists described the scene to their captives. If they did, it surely summoned up bitter memories. While probably none of the hostages thought the ordeal would last 444 days, as it had for the American hostages in Tehran, the parallels were nonetheless disturbing: they too had become pawns in an alien struggle over which they had no control.