Israel Turns Over Hijackers to Soviets : Moscow Offers Rare Praise to Jerusalem for Quick Action in Case

In a rare display of cooperation between two nations that are usually antagonistic, Israel on Saturday handed over a gang of Soviet hijackers to a squad of Soviet police officers who had flown from the Soviet Union on a special plane to collect them.

The officers and their prisoners left Ben-Gurion International Airport for home Saturday night, one day after the hijackers had arrived in Israel aboard a hijacked Soviet cargo jet. Back to the Soviet Union with them went more than $2 million paid by the Soviet government as ransom for a busload of hostage schoolchildren.

Alon Liel, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said four hijackers had been expelled as undesirables--since there is no extradition treaty between the Soviet Union and Israel. A Soviet woman accompanying the four--the wife of one of them--was not part of the gang as Israeli officials had originally been led to believe, Liel said.

The prisoners were led blindfolded from Abu Kabir jail near Tel Aviv to the airport as preparations for their return were shown live on Israel Television. Two of the prisoners departed in a Tupolev airliner that had brought the 19 Soviet police officers to Israel earlier in the day. The other two and the woman rode back in the Ilyushin-76 transport jet on which they had arrived Friday. All five arrived in the Soviet Union early today.

Political analysts said the swift, peaceful resolution of the bizarre incident would further improve ties between the two countries.

Israel, whose dislike for air pirates is legendary, improbably basked in Soviet praise Saturday. At an extraordinary Moscow news conference, Deputy Foreign Minister Boris N. Chaplin applauded Israel’s “understanding on this matter.” Foreign Minister Edward A. Shevardnadze received Israel’s senior consular official in Moscow to express Soviet thanks, Liel told reporters here.

KGB Monitors Situation

Chaplin and Vitaly A. Ponomaryov, deputy chief of the KGB security police, said that Soviet leaders, including President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, had kept close touch with a drama that began Thursday in the city of Ordzhonikidze, about 800 miles south-southeast of Moscow.

The Soviet news agency Tass said that Kremlin leaders decided to provide the plane and the money to ransom 30 grade-school children and a teacher aboard a bus seized by the gang. In the past, the Soviets have not negotiated with hijackers: nine people died in March when troops stormed a plane being held by a family of jazz musicians demanding to go to England.

According to news reports from Moscow, Ponomaryov identified the leader of the assault on the school bus as Pavel L. Yakshiyants, a 38-year-old truck driver and convicted criminal and drug addict. Others of those taken into custody included Yakshiyants’ wife and three men in their 20s, all of them Soviet citizens.

The KGB officer said the money was thrown aboard the hijacked jet at the last minute as ransom for the teacher and the remaining 11 of 30 children whom the gang had seized on a bus in Ordzhonikidze.

The four men fired on the bus as it set off on a school field trip, Ponomaryov told reporters. “They were armed with shotguns, homemade guns and homemade grenades as well as cans of gasoline and knives,” he said.

Soviet police winnowed down the number of hostage children in the course of negotiations in a drama that lasted 22 hours, Ponomaryov said. At one stage, he said, Yakshiyants demanded drugs. “We eventually agreed to supply his needs because we thought it might calm him down,” he said.

Yakshiyants demanded a plane to fly to a capitalist country. First he asked to go to Pakistan, and then talked of other countries before deciding on Israel, Soviet officials said.

There was speculation that the Soviets may have encouraged Israel as a destination, believing--correctly--that the hijackers would encounter no welcome and a quick turnaround.