Hijackers’ Great Luck Duped Athens Security, Ex-Hostages Say

With incredible luck, two Lebanese hijackers duped security guards and devices before hijacking TWA Flight 847 on June 14, according to two Indianapolis hostages who said they witnessed the entire affair.

An account of the two men’s maneuvers was provided Monday by newly freed hostage James W. Hoskins Jr., 22, and his 21-year-old girlfriend Kathryn A. Davis, who was taken hostage but was among the women passengers released by the hijackers in Algeria.

The two said they moved through the Athens airport security procedures immediately ahead of the two hijackers.

“They were right behind us, and I made the comment to Kathy that they both looked strange,” Hoskins said. “One guy was really very edgy and the other guy was very calm.

“As we went through, we put our bags down to run through the X-ray machine, and the guy stuffed his bags in between our bags, and it ran through that way.

“I thought that was a little strange at the time,” he said, “and I made the comment to him that he’d better back off. I’m glad I didn’t get much stronger than that.”

Hoskins said he presumes that the bags contained the grenades used by the hijackers to terrorize the passengers aboard the plane. If so, they went undetected.

Flunks Metal Detector

The second hijacker was stopped by the metal detector before boarding the flight, Hoskins and Davis said.

“He went through right behind me, and he flunked the first time,” Hoskins said. “The buzzers went off, I turned around and looked, and he threw his hands in the air, like this”--Hoskins raised his arms in a gesture of surrender--”and he was shaken.”

Hoskins said the Athens airport guard in charge of the metal detector removed a metal pen and a cigarette lighter from the hijacker’s pockets.

Yet, he triggered the alarm on his second walk through the scanner, Hoskins said. The hijacker finally succeeded in clearing in a third effort to pass the metal detector by walking through it backwards, Hoskins said.

“Immediately after the guy let him go, he ran for his bag, and pushed through the crowd,” Hoskins added. “I think he was the first guy on the transport (vehicle) that took us out to the plane.”

Davis said the two men’s behavior made them suspicious but not suspicious enough. Hoskins, she said, “didn’t want to get on the plane, but he thought he was really being paranoid, you know.”

Twenty minutes after takeoff, the two men took over the plane.

“I looked at Kath, and Kath looked at me, and our jaws just dropped,” Hoskins said.

“We knew,” Davis said. “We knew.”