Souhaila Andrawes

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Souhaila Sami Andrawes as-Sayeh ( Arabic سهيلة أندراوس, DMG Suhayla Andrāwis ; * March 28, 1953 in Hadath, Greater Beirut ) alias Soraya Ansari ( Arabic ثريا الأنصاري, DMG Ṯurayyā al-Anṣāriyy ) is a former member of the militant Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and a convicted terrorist. She was involved in the hijacking of the "Landshut" plane .

biography

Origin and education

Souhaila Andrawes, the daughter of Palestinian parents who had to leave their hometown of Haifa after the First Israeli-Arab War , grew up in Beirut. She was raised in the Christian faith and attended a girls' school run by French nuns . In 1965 she moved with her parents to Kuwait , where she briefly attended a Muslim school, which she left at her own request. Her actual goal of becoming a nun herself could never have been achieved in the predominantly Muslim Kuwait, which is why she wanted to move to Jerusalem . The outbreak of the Six Day War in 1967 ruined their plans. Although Andrawes finished school as the best of her year, she was not able to study because she was neither a Kuwaiti citizen nor had the necessary connections. She then studied English language and literature in Lebanon .

terrorism

Her turn to terrorism came under the influence of her Palestinian relatives. In 1969 she met the hijacker Leila Chaled , who also impressed her. Thanks to financial engagement, Andrawes got more contact with the Palestinian resistance movement. Shortly after the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, she returned to Kuwait, where she began to work as a journalist in order to become politically active. At the end of 1976 she got in touch with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) through a colleague . At the beginning of 1977, she received military training in a PFLP camp in Aden, Yemen , where she met the high-ranking PFLP man Zaki Helou and his German wife Monika Haas . After a stay in Kuwait, she came to Baghdad ( Iraq ) at the beginning of October 1977 , where she met the three other members of the militant group with which she kidnapped the Landshut just a few days later on behalf of Wadi Haddad . Andrawes arrived in Palma de Mallorca on October 8, 1977 .

On October 13, 1977, Andrawes hijacked Lufthansa flight LH 181 Landshut with three other PFLP members of the so-called Martyr Halima Command . The captain of the Landshut, Jürgen Schumann, was shot in the head by the hijackers in Aden / Yemen. After Landshut was liberated by a command of GSG 9 during Operation Magic Fire in Mogadishu , the capital of Somalia , she was the only survivor among the terrorists. After the liberation of the passengers, Andrawes, then 24, could be seen in TV recordings, as she was carried through the arrival hall of the airport lying on a stretcher covered in blood after being shot in the legs and lungs , raised her hand to the victory sign and "Kill me, we will win! ”shouted.

On April 25, 1978, she was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in Somalia, but was deported to Iraq in October 1978. In 1978 and 1979, on the mediation of the PFLP, she traveled several times from Iraq to Czechoslovakia to treat her gunshot wounds that had not healed since the hostage liberation in Mogadishu . She later moved to Beirut to resume her studies there. In view of the Israeli intervention in the civil war there, she did not end it, but fled to Damascus, where in 1983 she met the Palestinian journalist Ahmed Abu-Matar, whom she later married. In 1990 the couple, who had had a daughter since 1985, were expelled from Syria and received political asylum in Norway in 1991 after living in Cyprus .

Stay in Norway and imprisonment

In 1994, Andrawes was tracked down in Norway on the basis of information from German investigators, arrested in Oslo on October 13 - exactly 17 years after the Landshut abduction began - and extradited to Germany on November 25, 1995, where she was in Hamburg on November 19, 1996 Was sentenced to 12 years in prison for her involvement in murder, kidnapping, hostage-taking, and airplane hijacking.

In 1997 she was given permission to serve the remainder of her sentence in Norway and was transferred there. Since her health was impaired as a result of the gunshot wounds she had sustained when she stormed the Lufthansa plane, she was released early from custody by the Norwegian government on November 30, 1999. Since then she has lived in Oslo again with her husband and daughter.

In the book For the RAF he was the system, for me he was the father of Anne Siemens, the Landshut hostage Gabriele von Lutzau expresses her lack of understanding that Andrawes could live undisturbed in Norway and only sat in prison for a total of four years for her act have. The former stewardess describes Andrawes as particularly cruel and merciless. So she only laughed in cold blood when the leader of the terrorists shot the flight captain Jürgen Schumann .

Andrawes talks about the crime in Heinrich Breloer's film Death Game (WDR 1997). This film is half documentary, half feature film. In the interviews, she expresses regret over her participation in the crime.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Hanseatic Higher Regional Court (Hamburg): Judgment in the criminal case against Souhaila Sami Andrawes Sayeh ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.unodc.org archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) from November 19, 1996, accessed on August 26, 2015
  2. ^ Michael Hanfeld , FAZ December 1, 2007: Feature film. The real hero of the Landshut. On October 13, 1977, a Lufthansa plane was hijacked by terrorists. Thirty years later the journalist Maurice Philip Remy answered the question: What did the pilot Jürgen Schumann do before he was executed.
  3. ↑ Focus, August 25, 2007: RAF murder - the last minutes of the “Landshut” captain.
  4. ↑ Margrit Gerste: Between remorse and tears. In: Zeit Online , May 10, 1996, accessed October 18, 2017.
  5. ↑ Andreas Förster: “Kill me, kill me” she shouted in the face of her guards . In: Berliner Zeitung . April 30, 1996 ( text archive [accessed October 9, 2008]).
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Georgi: Soraya Ansari, ex-terrorist and hijacker. In: Berliner Zeitung of November 27, 1995, accessed on October 18, 2017.
  7. ^ Judka Strittmatter: Twelve years imprisonment for Souhaila Andrawes . In: Berliner Zeitung . November 20, 1996 ( text archive [accessed October 18, 2017]).
  8. ^ The Norwegian government pardons Souhaila Andrawes. In: Der Tagesspiegel. November 30, 1999, accessed October 18, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Woman Tied to 1977 Hijacking Fights Extradition to Germany. In: The New York Times . Retrieved October 18, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Andrawes, Souhaila
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Andrawes Sayeh, Souhaila Sami (full name); Ansari, Soraya
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Palestinian terrorist
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Hadath