Zohair Youssif Akache

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Zohair Youssif Akache , Arabic زهير يوسف عكاشة, DMG Zuhair Yūsuf ʿAkāša , alias Captain Martyr Mahmud (* 1954 in Burj al-Barajneh , † October 18, 1977 in Mogadishu ), was a Palestinian terrorist of the PFLP . In 1977 he led the hijacking of the Lufthansa plane Landshut and murdered its commander Jürgen Schumann .

Life

Akache, who came from a family who fled Palestine to Lebanon, grew up in a refugee camp south of Beirut. He studied aeronautical engineering from 1973 until he graduated in 1975 from Chelsea College of Aeronautical Engineering in London. He joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine ( PFLP) in 1972 and was recruited by the Popular Front's co-founder, Wadi Haddad , for the splinter group PFLP-EO, which he led and which, with the support of the Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi , operated outside the Middle East Had specialized in attacks.

In December 1974 he attacked police officers on the sidelines of a peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstration in central London, but was initially allowed to continue his studies in Great Britain without any consequences. A PFLP activist known to the police, he was finally expelled from Great Britain in 1976 after he had been imprisoned for another assault on a police officer for six months while on a hunger strike. In early 1977, however, he returned with a forged passport. Akache was the main suspect of the investigators in the unsolved case of the murder of the former North Yemeni Prime Minister Kadhi Abdullah al-Hagri , his wife and a North Yemeni diplomat in London on April 10, 1977. He left Great Britain immediately after the attack.

As head of the four-member commands Martyr Halimeh he commanded the kidnapping of the airplane "Landshut" of Lufthansa in October 1977. The aim of the mission of the split-off from the PFLP PFLP carried out EO move was the release of the JVA Stuttgart imprisoned Red Army Faction -To reach terrorists. The hostage-takers threatened the murder of all passengers and crew members on board the Landshut. Akache and the other members of the commando had received the order for the kidnapping from Wadi Haddad a few days earlier in Baghdad.

During the five-day action, Akache was feared by the hostages mainly because of his outbursts of choleric anger, which often resulted in violence, humiliation and death threats. On October 16, he murdered the captain of the Landshut, Jürgen Schumann , in Aden , South Yemen . His often unpredictable and arbitrary decisions included ordering a cake and a bottle of champagne for a flight attendant in his power to celebrate her birthday. A passenger in whose handbag Akache a fountain pen brand Montblanc discovered he threatened with execution because he in the trademark by mistake a Star of David thought he recognized that identify the passenger as a Jew. In his search for Jews, he also misinterpreted the Junghans trademark on the copilot's wristwatch as a clear feature. His battle name "Martyrer Mahmud", used during the kidnapping, referred to Wilfried Böse , who was killed in Operation Entebbe in July 1976 and who had the code name Mahmud within the PFLP.

Akache, like two of his accomplices in the liberation of Landshut, was shot dead by a command from the GSG 9 special unit .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stefan Aust: Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the RAF p. 384
  2. ↑ Michael Sontheimer: "Of course you can shoot": A short history of the Red Army faction. DVA, 2010.
  3. ^ Stefan Aust: Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the RAF p. 384f
  4. ↑ Evan Smith: The PFLP / RAF terrorist who evaded the UK border control system: Zohair Akache and the 'German Autumn', in the Hatful of History blog from August 3, 2014 (English)
  5. ↑ An honorable assignment, in: Spiegel from January 16, 1995, accessed on August 5, 2014
  6. ^ Robert Probst: The "Landshut" is kidnapped, in: Süddeutsche.de from May 17, 2010, accessed on August 5, 2014
  7. ↑ Terrorism: The German Autumn ( Memento of the original from August 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stern.de archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in: Stern.de on February 14, 2001, accessed on August 5, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Akache, Zohair Youssif
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Captain Martyr Mahmud; Akache, Zohair
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Palestinian terrorist
DATE OF BIRTH 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Beirut
DATE OF DEATH October 18, 1977
Place of death Mogadishu