Syrian Defector Tells of Flying Through Israeli Air Defenses

A Syrian air force defector told today how he skimmed through Israeli air defenses at just below the speed of sound, searching for a place to land before he could be shot down.

“I thought I might be intercepted by Israeli forces,” MIG-23 pilot Mohammed Bassem Adel, 33, told a news conference arranged by the Israeli army at a military base near Tel Aviv.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has said Israel’s air defenses failed to detect the Soviet-made fighter when it flew through the border Wednesday, and an investigation into the apparent lapse has begun.

Bassem Adel, slim, erect and unsmiling, said he planned his defection several months in advance and had had no prior contact with Israel.

“I crossed the Israeli border at (about 700 m.p.h.), flying no higher than 150 feet and sometimes as low as 90 feet, depending on terrain,” he said through an Israeli interpreter.

“It was a very difficult mission, particularly because that part of the border is full of missiles,” the Syrian pilot said.

At that speed and altitude, he could not waggle his plane’s wings nor lower the landing gear to show that he had no hostile intent. Instead, he turned off its electronic systems.

“My priority was to land as quickly as possible . . . so I could get out and tell someone I wanted to defect,” he said.

“I knew that as a single aircraft, I did not pose a threat to a country that has confidence in itself.”

He said he did not know where he was going in Israel and would have tried to land on a road had he not spotted the small civilian airstrip near Megiddo where he came down about four minutes after crossing the border.