The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks by Edward Mickolus, Susan L. Simmons

headed by Wadi Haddad.
    In the wake of Japan’s embarrassment over caving in to hijackers during a September 28, 1977, incident in India and Germany’s jubilation over its success, many other nations felt pressed to establish similar commando rescue squads.
    On March 20, 1993, Monika Haas was arrested for involvement in the Landshut hijacking. A warrant was issued for hostage-taking, kidnapping for the purpose of blackmail, and disrupting air traffic. She had beenunder investigation since March 4, 1993. She had written a book entitled The Red Army Faction–Stasi Connection . Haas was tried in 1996 for providing the weapons. She was sentenced in 1998 to five years in prison. A federal court dismissed her 2000 appeal.
    On October 31, 1994, Der Spiegel reported that Palestinian Soraya Ansari, 41, was arrested in Norway and provided investigators with details of the Landshut hijacking of which she was the sole survivor. She stated that she knew Haas, who lived in Frankfurt, Germany. She said that Haas was the former wife of a Palestinian leader. Germany’s request for Ansari’s extradition was rejected by a lower court judge on December 9, 1994, citing humanitarian considerations. The decision was reversed a week later by an intermediate level court. She was freed just before Christmas.
    As of January 6, 1995, Ansari, alias Souhaila Sami Andrawes, was fighting extradition. She admitted her role in the hijacking. A Somali court convicted her of air piracy and terrorism and sentenced her to 20 years. She was placed on a cargo plane to Baghdad and freedom in 1978. Beirut-born Ansari had been on Interpol’s wanted list since the early 1980s. Norwegian authorities said they did not know of her past when she, her husband Ahmed Abu-Matar, and daughter received residency permits after arriving from Cyprus in 1991.
    Ansari claimed that Germany could not try her because of double jeopardy; she had already served time in Somali jails for the same crime. German officials said that a new German trial would be lawful because Somalia is not a signatory to international judicial conventions and that a year in jail fell far short of justice.
    On November 19, 1996, Hamburg’s State Supreme Court convicted Suhaila Sayeh, a Palestinian woman, of murder and other crimes and sentenced her to 12 years in prison for her role in the Landshut hijacking. She was one of the four hijackers, but claimed she had no role in killing the plane’s pilot. The court ruled that she had been complicit. Sayeh was the only hijacker to survive the German GSG 9 rescue operation in Somalia that freed 87 hostages. She was arrested in 1994 in Oslo, Norway, and extradited to Germany.
March 16, 1978
Aldo Moro Kidnapping
    Overview: Leftist terrorists plagued Italy during the 1970s, conducting thousands of attacks during that period. Although the Italian Left was badly splintered, the main terrorist worry for the government was the Red Brigades, whose tentacles spread to various other European leftist and Palestinian revolutionaries. The Red Brigades conducted numerous bombings, assassinations, and bank heists during its long history. Its major claim to infamy came with the kidnapping, two-month hostage negotiation, and murder of former Italian premier Aldo Moro. An embarrassedgovernment conducted a massive manhunt for the killers and dismantled the Red Brigades along the way.
    Incident: On March 16, 1978, a dozen members of the Red Brigades killed five bodyguards while kidnapping Aldo Moro. The Rome abduction took place at 8:15 A.M . when Moro’s sedan, accompanied by a police car, was ambushed as he was on his way to meet with Christian Democratic Premier Guilio Andreotti, who was going to request a vote of confidence for the first communist-supported government in 31 years. Moro, 61, president of the ruling Christian Democrats, was cut off by two stolen cars from which three to five terrorists jumped out and fired machine guns. The two