Aeroflot flight 3739

During the hijacking of Irkutsk on March 8, 1988, the extended Russian family Ovechkin ( Russian Овечкин ) from the Siberian city ​​of Irkutsk attempted to hijack a Tupolev Tu-154 passenger aircraft , with which Aeroflot flight 3739 from Kurgan to Leningrad was carried out, to flee from the Soviet Union to the West. The kidnapping , which ended in a catastrophe with several dead and injured, is considered the first hostage drama in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union with high media coverage and also attracted public attention because the Ovechkins were known as a family of musicians in their home country at the time.

background

At the time of the kidnapping, the Ovetschkin family consisted of the single mother Ninel Sergejewna (51 years old), widowed since 1984, the sons Vasily (26), Dmitri (24), Oleg (21), Alexander (19), Igor (16), Michail (13) and Sergei (9) as well as their daughters Ljudmila (32), Olga (28), Tatjana (14) and Uljana (10). The eldest daughter Lyudmila, who already had a family of her own and no longer lived in the parental home, was - unlike the other eleven Ovechkins - not involved in the kidnapping case. The main role in the kidnapping played the five eldest sons.

In Irkutsk, the Ovechkin family lived in a simple wooden house with a farm. Even if the children grew up in poor conditions, the mother Ninel Sergejewna was considered very caring, which may also have been the reason why a lot of effort was invested in the musical education of the brothers who were considered gifted. So it came about that in the early 1980s the older brothers were able to play their respective instruments - including drums , trumpet , clarinet and saxophone - and finally even founded an amateur jazz ensemble , which they called "Seven." In reference to an old Russian folk tale Simeons ”( Семь Симеонов ).

After numerous appearances, first in Irkutsk and later in other cities of the former Soviet Union, the brothers were so successful in their homeland that they were mentioned in numerous newspaper articles and in 1985 a first documentary was made about them. The climax of the musical career of the "Seven Simeons" came in autumn 1987 when the band was invited to Japan for a guest appearance as part of a cultural delegation from Irkutsk Oblast . As the surviving siblings later in the documentary There were once seven Simeons ... said several times, the prosperity and glittering world of Tokyo made such a strong impression on the Ovechkins that they wanted to flee and ask for political asylum in Japan , which they did It failed mainly due to a lack of money and constant observation by KGB agents. Even if the Ovechkins got a new apartment from the Soviet state, they had to continue to live in the simplest of circumstances in their homeland, despite musical successes, as the money earned during performances was not even enough to furnish the new apartment. In desperation, the family, including the mother, finally decided to travel to the supposedly rich West in order to escape the poverty in the Soviet Union. Since there was usually no way for a simple Soviet citizen to get abroad legally, the Ovechkins decided, in the absence of promising alternatives, to try an airplane hijacking.

The kidnapping process

An Aeroflot Tu-154

After intensive preparations, the Ovechkins finally selected a Tupolev Tu-154 of the then state-owned Soviet airline Aeroflot as the kidnapping object , with which they were to travel to Leningrad for a performance . On the morning of March 8, 1988, the plane took off from Irkutsk Airport and, after a stopover in Kurgan, finally headed for Leningrad.

Since the Ovechkin brothers knew from their earlier appearances that the security checks at Soviet airports were still comparatively lax in the 1980s and, in particular, that nobody had ever thought of subjecting the musical instruments of the "Simeons" to a closer inspection, they used it this security gap to smuggle a number of weapons on board, mainly assembled from hunting rifles. In addition to firearms, the Ovechkins also managed to hide a self-made explosive device in a double bass and thus also take it into the machine. This explosive device was to be detonated if the hostage-taking failed and would kill the entire family.

Around 3 p.m., shortly before the start of the approach to Leningrad airport , the brothers called a stewardess over and handed her a slip of paper requesting the crew to change course immediately and head for London instead of Leningrad . In the event that the approach did begin, the brothers threatened to begin shooting passengers and, in extreme cases, to blow up the plane. The weapons they brought with them were demonstrated to make the threat plausible. The other passengers did not initially notice the kidnapping, as the Ovechkin family and their musical instruments were housed in a separate passenger compartment of the aircraft that was only half full with a total of 76 passengers. The mother Ninel did not take an active part in the hostage-taking, but knew exactly about the plan and had approved it - as did the sisters (with the exception of Lyudmila who stayed at home) and the two youngest brothers.

Immediately after handing over the slip of paper, the pilots alerted air traffic control. The leading role in the kidnapping case lay with the eldest brother Vasily, who was able to communicate with the crew through the flight attendant Tamara Sharkaya. So Sharkaya was able to convince the Ovechkins relatively quickly that the fuel of the machine would under no circumstances reach as far as London. Wassili gave in and finally allowed the plane to land in Finland for an intermediate refueling stop .

In reality, the crew received instructions from the ground crew not to land in Finland, but near the Soviet-Finnish border, namely at the Weschtschowo military airfield near Vyborg . The attempt to hide this from the Ovechkins failed, however, as uniformed soldiers were still on the airfield at the time of landing. When the brothers looked out of the window and understood that they had obviously landed on Soviet soil, the real hostage drama began: Dmitri started shooting around, causing panic among other passengers. The flight attendant Tamara Sharkaya initially managed to keep the situation halfway under control by trying to convince the brothers that the tank was not even enough to reach Finland and that the landing near Leningrad would therefore have been necessary for survival. The Ovechkins then demanded that the aircraft be refueled immediately and take off again.

Meanwhile, a special task force from the Soviet Interior Ministry hurried over . When Dmitri saw soldiers trying to get into the passenger compartments via the hold of the aircraft, he finally freaked out and shot Sharkaya to the chest. When the machine began to storm and the Ovechkins realized that they had no more chance, Alexander detonated the bomb that he had always held in his hand since the start of the hostage situation. The entire family moved together to die in the explosion - only 16-year-old Igor, who was still afraid of death at the last moment, hid in a toilet room from his family's collective suicide . However, the subsequent explosion of the self-made explosive device was so weak that no one was harmed. Vasily then shot his mother, who asked him to do so, and then judged herself. His brothers Dmitri, Oleg and Alexander immediately shot themselves as well. The sisters and the two little brothers had been accommodated by Vasily before landing in the other passenger compartment together with the other passengers, which presumably saved their lives.

Meanwhile, the explosion of the explosive device started a fire in the machine. The surviving crew managed to provide two emergency exits through which the passengers could leave the aircraft. Some passengers jumped in panic and desperation from the other openings, where there were no evacuation slides, and suffered broken bones and other, sometimes serious injuries. On top of that, the storming by the interior ministry's special troops, which had not been prepared for such kidnapping cases, was extremely unprofessional and flawed: the soldiers, allegedly because they could not initially distinguish the kidnappers from other passengers, beat uninvolved and often injured passengers a. They also seriously wounded Sergei, the youngest Ovechkin brother, with a shot in the thigh.

The machine burned out completely. Three passengers died of smoke inhalation , and dozen escaped with severe injuries or burns. In total, the kidnapping resulted in nine deaths - three passengers, the shot flight attendant Sharkaya, mother Ovechkin and her four eldest sons - and 35 injured.

consequences

In September 1988, the two surviving criminal hostage-takers - 17-year-old Igor and 28-year-old Olga - came to court in Irkutsk. Although one of the flight attendants subsequently changed her testimony in favor of these more passively involved siblings, both were sentenced to prison terms: Igor to eight years and Olga, who was six months pregnant at the time of the kidnapping, to six years. Both were released early in the early 1990s. Igor Ovechkin later became a criminal, was arrested in 1999 for drug trafficking and murdered in prison by a fellow inmate that same year. After her release, Olga lived with her new partner, who killed her in June 2004 after a drinking binge. The siblings, who were under criminal responsibility at the time of the kidnapping, and Olga's little daughter, who was born in prison, were raised by the eldest sister, Lyudmila Owetschkina. Mikhail was the only surviving Ovechkin sibling to continue his musical career. Today he lives in Spain and plays in the "Jinx Jazz Band" there.

The kidnapping met with considerable media coverage in what was then the Soviet Union, which did not completely subside even after its collapse. In 1990, Herz Frank and Wladimir Eisner shot There were once seven Simeons ... ( Жили-были Семь Симеонов ) the best-known documentary about the family and the kidnapping drama, in which feature film scenes were sometimes used. In 1999, the feature film based on the case called Mama (with Nonna Mordjukowa , Oleg Menshikov and Yevgeny Mironov, among others) was released in Russia .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ incident report CCCP-85413 in the Aviation Safety Network
2. ↑ The Ovechkins - Nobody wanted to kill ; all ages at the time of kidnapping
3. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of July 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ ^{a b} Argumenty i Fakty, March 5, 2008
5. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from March 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ Official website of the "Jinx Jazz Band" ( memento of the original from October 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Web links

• Once upon a time there were seven Simeons . Review of the film of the same name with a description of the background (German)
• Soviet Reports 9 Died in Hijacking of Jet by Family . New York Times , March 11, 1988 (English)
• The Ovechkins: Nobody wanted to kill . An NTW documentation (1999, Russian)
• An article dated March 5, 2008 , Argumenty i Fakty (Russian)