Thatcher restates firm policy after hijackers give up

Press, 2 March 1982, Page 8

Thatcher restates firm policy after hijackers give up

NZPA-Reuter . London ; Relieved by .a bloodless end to an airline hijacking that began in East Africa, the British Prime Minister (Mrs Margaret Thatcher) has restated her Government’s tough policy towards hijackers. . . . • “If they are hijackers and they come here they won’t leave,” she . told reporters after four Tanzanian gunmen surrendered and released their hostages yesterday at Stansted Airport, north-east of London/; . '

British authorities blocked the runway with fire engines after the plane landed at the week-end with 86 people aboard.

‘ They surrounded the Boeing 737 with the police and

troops and refused to let the hijackers, make a public statement of their grievances against the Tanzanian President (Mr Julius Nyerere). The hijackers gave in gradually, releasing their hostages in groups. Finally, two bewildered 10-year-old children,' apparently members of the hijackers’ own families, were sent out of the plane, to hand their weapons to the police. Most of the arms turned out to be fake, including two wooden pistols and a wooden grenade. But the hijackers did have one real loaded pistol. The plane was hijacked on Friday' during an internal Tanzanian flight and crossed three continents before' land-

ing in London. The hijackers stopped in Nairobi, Jeddah and Saudia Arabia, and Athens where the co-pilot was treated for a bullet wound by a Greek doctor. British police spokesmen said after the surrender that they had been determined not to' let the plane leave Britain. They would have stormed the aircraft if necessary and would not have agreed to any concession that might encourage future hijackings.

'• Mrs Thatcher told reporters: “The message is that everyone who hijacks or wants to hijack, if they bring an aircraft here they won’t leave. If every other country did that, we could stop hijacking.”