Aircraft hijacking
A hijacking (also air piracy , engl. Hijacking aircraft period) is the acquisition of the on-board power of an aircraft by violence or threats by force by one or more air pirates.
The distinction to piracy in the traditional sense arises from the fact that air pirates have no financial interest in appropriating objects on board the aircraft or the aircraft itself. Most aircraft hijackings are carried out by taking passengers hostage by the air pirates in order to reinforce the demands of the air pirates. Aircraft hijackings with hostage-taking usually follow a pattern of negotiations between the air pirates and the security authorities, which are then followed by either a kind of “compromise agreement” or the storming of the aircraft by armed police or special units with the aim of rescuing the hostages.
The cockpit crew can use the transponder code 7500 to report an aircraft hijacking to air traffic control in an unguarded moment without the knowledge of the hijacker.
history
The oldest recorded kidnapping took place on February 21, 1931 in Arequipa ( Peru ). Byron Rickards, who flew a Ford Trimotor , was harassed on the ground by armed revolutionaries. He refused to fly them anywhere and, after a ten-day stalemate, was told that the revolution had been successful and that if he could fly one of them to Lima, he could leave. Most kidnappings, however, have been less harmless. Probably the first hijacking of a commercial airline flight was on July 16 1948, in the vain attempt to take control of a Cathay Pacific - seaplane to gain, that caused it in the ocean from Macau fell.
Since 1947, 60% of abductions have been attempts by refugees to leave the country . 1968–1969 saw a massive increase in the number of kidnappings. In 1968 there were 27 kidnappings or attempted kidnappings to Cuba. In 1969, 82 kidnapping attempts were recorded worldwide, more than double the total period from 1947–1967. Most were those in which Palestinians used airplane hijacking as political leverage to get the message across and to force the Israeli government to release Palestinian prisoners from prison.
After the peak of 385 incidents in the period from 1967 to 1976, the number of aircraft hijackings has fallen again. In the following years from 1977–1986 the number had decreased to 300 incidents, in the period 1987–1996 it was 212.
Preventive measures
One of the tasks of aviation security under the applicable provisions is to prevent aircraft hijacking (hazard prevention). If an aircraft hijacking has already started, the general police laws apply. The main areas of public and / or private prevention include the background check of airport employees and flight personnel, the control of passengers, their luggage and cargo, as well as self-security measures at airports ( airport security ) and airlines:
- Review of the passenger list with regard to dangerous persons (comparison with a "black list")
- Searching of flight passengers and their hand luggage
- Examination of luggage (e.g. with metal detectors)
- Use of covert security personnel on board (so-called sky marshals )
- Prohibition of weapons and dangerous objects in hand luggage (knives, scissors, etc.)
- Armored doors to the cockpit
- Recording of all movements of passengers (who is where, when, movement image )
- Collection of data from flight passengers and staff (fingerprints, portraits)
- Videographs , if possible with automated evaluation of biometric data.
- Secondary Security Screening Selection (SSSS) , a procedure to check suspicious persons more precisely
Situation after September 11, 2001
Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , a new fundamental factor has to be taken into account in preventive measures and in dealing with aircraft hijackings. The aircraft hijackings that took place on this day differed from other aircraft hijackings in that no claims were made, but the hijacked aircraft were used for kamikaze attacks with the conscious acceptance of the resulting murder of all people on board. The particular danger of such aircraft hijackings results beyond the use of the aircraft as a flying bomb from the fact that especially religiously motivated suicide bombers are determined to complete their terrorist act. They are therefore not accessible to negotiations in the course or outcome of which damage to the passengers on board could be at least partially mitigated. The taking of the passengers hostage only serves to prevent the security authorities from attacking the flying aircraft. A particular difficulty for the security authorities is to determine whether they are actually suicide bombers, that is, whether the air pirates merely pretend to be such or only reveal themselves as such shortly before reaching their terrorist target. Should a hijacked aircraft stop over for refueling in the future, the primary goal of the security authorities, in addition to protecting the passengers, is to strictly prevent an onward flight.
When assessing the situation in a hijacked aircraft, new aspects have to be included in the prognosis: So far, aircraft hijackings have generally led to negotiations with the security authorities, in the course of which air pirates usually promised the release of all or some of the hostages, should theirs Requirements are (partially) met. The hostages kept calm in order to avoid escalation and so survive the kidnapping unscathed. In this respect, the kidnappers had little risk of hostages interfering in what was happening on board. Since it cannot be ruled out that a kidnapping was carried out with the aim of suicide and mass murder, the willingness of hostages on board to try in active self-defense to save their lives by overpowering the kidnappers is much higher. Audio recordings from the fourth hijacked machine on September 11, for example, show that the hostages tried to overpower the aerial pirates after learning about the other attacks via cell phones. Because every hijacker has to take similar reactions into account in the future, the latent risk of an escalation on board is to be assessed as significantly higher.
Abduction cases (examples)
See: List of hijackings
Law
In order to combat air piracy, the three agreements of Tokyo , the Hague and the Montreal agreements are mainly used at international level . These should u. a. ensure that every air pirate, regardless of where they are, is held accountable. States that grant asylum to the air pirates must also convict them of air piracy. In Germany , according to Section 316c StGB , air piracy is punished with imprisonment for no less than five years. The offense also includes the use of firearms and the plan to cause an explosion or fire in order to destroy an aircraft or its cargo. Deprivation of liberty and hostage-taking can also be considered as criminal offenses . The Austrian StGB contains in § 102 (extortionate kidnapping) and § 185f. (Air piracy, aviation hazard) similar criminal offenses. The same applies to the Swiss Criminal Code in Article 183 (kidnapping), Article 185 ( hostage-taking ) and Article 237 (disruption of public transport).
In Germany, the federal government initiated the Aviation Security Act in 2004 in order to create a legal basis for shooting down an aircraft hijacked with passengers on board in good time in Renegade cases ; In 2006, the Federal Constitutional Court's judgment on the Aviation Security Act 2005 declared the latter to be unconstitutional.
See also
literature
- Heiko Schäffer: Protecting civil aviation against terrorism: The contribution of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) . Baden-Baden: Nomos 2007. ISBN 978-3-8329-2435-5 .
- Heiko Schäffer: Terrorist Threats to Air Traffic - Criminal Law Answers in Germany and the USA , Giessen 2009, ISBN 978-3-937983-22-6
- Annette Vowinckel : Airplane hijackings. A cultural story . Göttingen 2011.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ The perpetrator-victim dilemma Ivar Ekeland SdW 12/2001 ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Cf. Frank Reichherzer: Review of: Vowinckel, Annette: Aircraft hijackings . A cultural story. Göttingen 2011 . In: H-Soz-u-Kult , September 7, 2012.
