Swissair flight 330

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Swissair flight 330
Swissair Coronado HB-ICD 'Baselland'.jpg

The HB-ICD at Zurich-Kloten Airport
Accident summary
Accident type Bomb attack
place Würenlingen
date February 21, 1970
Fatalities 47
Survivors 0
Aircraft
Aircraft type Convair CV-990
operator Swissair
Mark HB-ICD
Departure airport Zurich
Destination airport Tel Aviv
Passengers 38
crew 9
Lists of aviation accidents

Swissair flight SR330 was a scheduled flight from Kloten International Airport in Zurich , Switzerland to Tel Aviv , Israel . On February 21, 1970 the deployed Convair CV-990 crashed after a bomb exploded on board. All 47 people on board died. Testimony and investigation results indicated a terrorist attack by the Palestinian group PFLP-GC.

procedure

On this flight a Convair CV-990 Coronado with the name Basel-Land and registration HB-ICD flew this route. There were 38 passengers and nine crew members on board. Nine minutes after take-off, a bomb exploded in the rear cargo hold at 12:15 GMT when the aircraft was on a southerly course at Sattel-Hochstuckli after climbing . The pilots noticed a pressure drop above Brunnen and decided to return to Zurich for an emergency landing , but could no longer see the instruments because of the smoke in the cockpit.

The plane drifted more and more to the west, then shot over Klingnau from the clouds and crashed shortly afterwards in the undergrowth at Würenlingen from (47 ° 32'11 "N, 8 ° 14'23" W) coordinates: 47 ° 32 ' 11.1 "  N , 8 ° 14 '22.7"  O ; CH1903:  six hundred and sixty thousand three hundred twelve  /  265 383 because the power failed. The impact created a furrow six meters wide, three meters deep and 95 meters long; The entire tree population was damaged over an area of ​​130 by 80 meters. Nobody survived the crash. One of the victims was the German television journalist Rudolf Crisolli .

Reactions

On the day of the crash, a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Group - General Command (PFLP-GC) in Beirut declared his group to be responsible. The primary target of the attack was a senior Israeli official who was among the passengers. A few hours later, the PFLP-GC denied this statement. The group has nothing to do with the attack. Two days later, the commandant's office of the ten largest Palestinian command groups based in Jordan (including the PFLP-GC), which had been established two weeks earlier, also denied it and declared that a “thorough investigation” had shown beyond doubt that none of its members had anything to do with the Swissair crash had to do. The leader of Fatah, Yasser Arafat , confirmed this denial one day later on behalf of the headquarters at a press conference.

backgrounds

The Swiss federal criminal police identified Sufian Radi Kaddoumi and Badawi Mousa Jawher as alleged assassins; but she could not arrest them. The judicial investigation was discontinued on November 3, 2000 by the Federal Prosecutor's Office . As early as 1970 in Germany the case against two other Palestinians, Yaser Qasem and Issa Abu-Toboul, was dropped despite complicity and the two were deported. In Germany (as of 2010) there is a procedure; the two alleged main culprits are wanted by arrest warrant .

The prosecution of a Palestinian suspect of the attack on Swissair flight 330 was suspended by the judiciary for reasons unknown. In 1995 the then Federal Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte opened the case again despite the statute of limitations; the proceedings were closed in 2000 after the departure of Carla del Ponte.

There is speculation that the terrorist attack was directed against the Israeli airline El Al . Since their flight from Munich to Tel Aviv was very late, the mail that had been posted in Munich and was apparently intended for this El-Al flight had been diverted to the Swissair plane. In this package was the bomb. An air pressure dependent igniter was used for the attack. The fact that the detonator did not fire on the flight to Zurich was technically justified in the investigation report and a very small residual probability. It is possible that Swissair was actually the target of terrorists who wanted to extort protection money . It is likely that airlines such as Lufthansa paid protection money to Palestinian command groups in the 1970s .

At the beginning of 2016, Marcel Gyr , book author and journalist at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung , published the thesis that after September 6, 1970 there was contact between the then openly terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Swiss Foreign Minister, Federal Councilor Pierre Graber . A secret standstill agreement has probably been concluded between Switzerland and the PLO. In 2016, Gyr referred to released FBI documents in another NZZ article, which assume that two people living in West Germany were involved in the crime (bomb construction) .

After the crash

With the hijacking of a Swissair plane on September 6, 1970 , Switzerland was hit again by the Palestinian terror.

Due to the attack, the airports of Geneva and Zurich were secured in the autumn of 1970 by troops of the Swiss Army on active duty.

Memorial at the crash site (2010)

At the crash site in Würenlingen a memorial stone with all the names of the passengers reminds of the crash.

Crash site

The crash site in a forest near Würenlingen was just one kilometer east of the Federal Institute for Reactor Research (EIR), today's Paul Scherrer Institute .

Parallel event

On the same day, a bomb exploded on board the Caravelle OE-LCU of Austrian Airlines twenty minutes after take-off from Frankfurt Airport on the way to Vienna in the front cargo hold. The explosion tore a three-  foot by two-foot hole in the hull. The aircraft with 38 people (33 passengers and five crew members) on board returned to Frankfurt and landed there safely.

Contemporary historical context

The attacks on the Swissair aircraft and the Austrian Airlines aircraft occurred one day before the visit of Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban to the Federal Republic of Germany, which began in Munich. It was the first ever visit by an Israeli foreign minister to Germany; the then Federal Foreign Minister Walter Scheel replied on July 7, 1971.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Swissair flight 330  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A picture of the machine related to the accident , source checked on October 30, 2009
  2. ↑ NZZ.ch February 18, 2020: Was the attack on Swissair preceded by a misunderstanding by two secret services?
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar : “When will the fight against the holy cow Israel finally begin?” Munich 1970: on the anti-Semitic roots of German terrorism . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2013, ISBN 978-3-498-03411-5 , p. 175.
  4. ↑ Criminal occurrence description Feb. 21, 1970. ASN safety database, accessed February 5, 2010 .
  5. ↑ A list of all victims is printed by Wolfgang Kraushaar: “When will the fight against the holy cow Israel finally begin?” Reinbek 2013, pp. 179–181.
  6. ↑ 47 Killed on Airliner Bound for Israel: Arabs Take Responsibility. In: The New York Times of February 22, 1970, accessed November 6, 2018.
  7. ^ Guerrilla Groups Deny Crash Role. In: The New York Times, March 24, 1970, accessed November 6, 2018.
  8. ^ Arabs Reviewing Airliner Attacks. In: The New York Times of February 25, 1970, accessed November 6, 2018.
  9. ↑ Toni Bortoluzzi : 09.3062 - interpellation. Plane crash in Würenlingen. Prosecution. Vista Curia Parliamentary Business Database, June 12, 2009, accessed February 5, 2010 .
  10. ↑ a b c In the footsteps of the Würenlingen assassins , NZZ, May 12, 2018, page 15
  11. ↑ Marc Brupbacher: Swissair 330 death flight: Why were the perpetrators never caught? ( Memento from July 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) , Tages-Anzeiger from June 25, 2010.
  12. ↑ Marcel Gyr: Up close and personal with terrorists , Neue Zürcher Zeitung of January 20, 2016.
  13. ↑ Swiss Terror Years: Del Ponte's strange role in the Würenlingen case in Neue Zürcher Zeitung of January 21, 2016
  14. ↑ Marcel Gyr: Up close and personal with terrorists , Neue Zürcher Zeitung of January 20, 2016.
  15. ↑ Federal Bureau of Investigation: The Fedayeen Terrorist / Monograph. In: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Monograph: The Fedayeen Terrorist / Monograph, June, 1970. June 1970, accessed September 15, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Marcel Gyr: Swiss Terror Years: Controversial references from the USA to the "Würenlingen" case. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, NZZ.ch, September 15, 2016, accessed on September 15, 2016 .
  17. ↑ cf. z. B. also Tages-Anzeiger : Benno Gasser: The day on which the terror came to Switzerland. ( Memento of February 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Tages-Anzeiger of February 17, 2009. Retrieved on December 6, 2011.
  18. ↑ a b Aircraft accident data and report in the Aviation Safety Network (English)
  19. ↑ Historical prelude - 1970 first visit by an Israeli foreign minister to Germany ( Memento from September 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  20. ^ Walter Scheel in Israel ( Memento from February 25, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
  21. ↑ Daniel Weissenbrunner: "Papa never chunts more hot": Swissair crash has followed relatives to this day. In: Aargauer Zeitung of November 13, 2015.