‘I Thought I Was a Dead Man’ : Hostage Was Target in Russian Roulette

Arthur Toga’s most chilling memories of his time as a hostage after the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 were two occasions when his captors, who took a particular dislike to him, played Russian roulette with him as a target, according to a report published today.

Toga kept a diary during the 17-day ordeal on a rumpled piece of typing paper, he told the Chicago Tribune, which printed his account.

He recounted one of the hijackers on the jetliner, “walking up and down the aisle, clicking the hammer on his revolver.”

“It was a five-shot pistol and he pops open the chamber and removes four of the five rounds,” said Toga, 33, an assistant professor of neurology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “Then he gives the chamber a spin, points the gun at my stomach and pulls the trigger.

“I thought I was a dead man. I thought I was going to meet my maker.”

Toga said it was the first of two episodes of Russian roulette he was to endure, and that other passengers were subjected to the same torture. He did not detail the second incident.

Many of the passengers were beaten by the hijackers, who seemed to have taken a particular dislike to him, he said.

“This guy would come up and stick a gun in your ear and say: ‘You CIA? You CIA? You Israeli?’ ”

Toga said the passengers regarded flight attendant Uli Derickson as an “absolute hero” for the way she acted as a buffer between the hijackers and the captives. One of the terrorists became especially fond of her, Toga said, and asked her to leave the plane with him and marry him.

“That was the only time she really lost control,” Toga said. “The guy was serious about the proposal and it really threw Uli for a loop. She was crying and thinking about her family and the thought of being left behind with this guy.”

Toga said he began his diary of the hijacking with the permission of his captors after he and other passengers were taken off the plane and hidden in Shia hideouts in Beirut.

He described the hostages’ first few days off the plane as another ordeal.

“We lived in filth,” he said. “The place was a hovel. We had cockroaches, rats and a non-working toilet for 19 men with diarrhea.”