4 Hijackers of Soviet School Bus Sentenced to Up to 15 Years

A team of hijackers who kidnaped a busload of schoolchildren and traded them for drugs, money and a flight to Israel were convicted Friday and sentenced to prison terms of up to 15 years, the news agency Tass said.

The Supreme Court of the Russian republic found four hijackers guilty of banditry and illegally crossing the Soviet border. It sentenced the ringleader, Pavel Yakshiyants, to 15 years’ imprisonment and three others to 14 years each.

One of the three, Vladimir Muravlev, “flew into hysterics” when the sentence was read out, Tass said. “It took a 10-minute break to restore him to a state of relative calm.”

A fifth defendant, found guilty of being an accomplice, was given a three-year sentence.

The four hijackers commandeered a bus holding 30 fourth-graders and their teacher as it left for a field trip to a printing plant in the Caucasus city of Ordzhonikidze on Dec. 1. They traded the children and teacher for drugs, a large amount of foreign currency and finally for an Ilyushin-76 transport plane and safe passage to Israel on Dec. 2.

Israel allowed the plane to land but deported the hijackers the next day.

The incident led to close cooperation between Israel and the Soviet Union, which have had no diplomatic relations since the Soviets broke them following the 1967 Middle East war. Soviet officials have said most of the hijackers had criminal records and that the hijacking was not politically motivated.