Hijacking of TWA Flight 847
The whole world was watching when a Boeing 727 en route from Athens to Rome was hijacked shortly after takeoff on June 14, 1985. Viewers were gripped with suspense as TWA Flight 847, which had been commandeered by two armed men who were later joined in Beirut by a dozen additional hijackers, "zigzagged around the Mediterranean" for two days. The plane shuttled back and forth between Beirut and Algiers, as the hijackers made increasingly grave threats about what they would do unless the world gave into their list of demands -- which covered everything from fuel to bananas to the release of 700 Shiite prisoners in Israel.
Most of the passengers were released during the two days of back-and-forth flights and negotiations. But one passenger -- U.S. Navy Diver Robert Stetham -- was murdered, his body thrown from the aircraft during the second stop in Beirut. By the plane's third and final stop in Beirut on June 16, the only passengers yet to be released were 32 American citizens, who were taken off the aircraft and held hostage for another two weeks in Beirut. Mughniyeh was believed to be responsible, and later indicted for the hijacking. Upon his death in 2008, CNN called the takeover of Flight 847 "the one careless move that the man in the shadows made. Mughniyeh reportedly left a fingerprint on the plane, gaining him a place on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list with a $5 million bounty on his head."
Above, one of two heavily armed Lebanese Shiite militants, his face hidden with a bag, at Beirut's airport.
JOEL ROBINE/AFP/Getty Images
