In Cabin, Hijacking Played Like KGB vs. Keystone Kops

Nearly 33,000 feet in the air, the terrified passengers of the hijacked Russian jet little knew that the real threat to their lives wouldn’t come from the unbalanced hijacker in the cockpit.

Instead, in the middle of their Saturday night ordeal, it suddenly came from rival Russian security officers, whose eagerness to disarm one another and the terrorist nearly unleashed a shooting match on board.

While the lone hijacker, identified here as Akhmed Amirkhanov, threatened the pilots in the cockpit, two FSB officers, from the main successor agency to the KGB, pulled out their guns to subdue some suspicious-looking characters in the cabin. But the supposed accomplices turned out to be government security guards.

In a country where the police often resemble the bad guys, it might have been an understandable mistake--even if not for the fact that the FSB men shouldn’t have been carrying weapons on a regular passenger flight.

The events on the plane hijacked en route from the Russian republic of Dagestan to Moscow read like KGB meets Keystone Kops.

The hijacking ended peacefully. But even before it began, the two rival security groups had been eyeing each other suspiciously. Then the pilot announced that the plane had been hijacked. Each side, convinced of the complicity of the opposing camp and eager to be heroes, immediately hatched plans to disarm the other.

At one point, Col. Oleg Lutsenko, a member of the FSB anti-terrorist squad who was on his way home after a mission in the republic of Chechnya, pulled out his pistol, sprang into the aisle and screamed, “Everybody, raise your hands behind your head and keep your face down!”

Commenting on the armed confrontation, an FSB spokesman in Dagestan said later that the FSB officers merely “tried to calm down the passengers.”

Aviation analyst Gennady Aralov, from the weekly newspaper Air Transport, said the officers threatened the lives of all on board by drawing weapons in a highly volatile situation.

“This situation could have ended in tragedy because there were at least two groups of law enforcement agents who suspected each other of being the terrorist accomplices,” Aralov said. “What’s worse, guns were drawn right in the passenger compartment.

“If shooting had broken out, the consequences could have been horrible for everybody on board that plane,” he added. “I can see how explosive and unpredictable the situation was, and I can imagine what the passengers felt when they saw men brandishing guns, jumping around the cabin and barking commands.”

According to Russian media reports, at least 12 of the plane’s 49 passengers were military or security officers, not surprising given that the flight was traveling from Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.

The southern republic neighbors Chechnya, where Russia continues its war against separatist fighters.

The case has highlighted the lax enforcement of weapons rules on Russian flights.

Unlike the FSB men, the six security guards traveling with Dagestani Finance Minister Abdusamad Gamidov handed in their three pistols before boarding, in accordance with general aviation rules.

But a junior police officer openly handed the guns to the pilot in the cockpit before takeoff, and later the hijacker was able to get hold of the pistols and bullet clips.

After the hijacking, the Vnukovo Airlines Tu-154 was diverted first to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and then to the Uvda military base in Israel, where the hijacker surrendered peacefully without having harmed anyone.

When the pilot announced the hijacking about 40 minutes after takeoff, the FSB’s Lutsenko took his pistol out of its holster, clicked off the safety catch and hid the gun under his armpit, ready to act against six “sporty” fellows in the cabin whom he suspected of involvement in the hijacking.

But they acted first, accosting him and frisking him for weapons.

“I thought that they were terrorists,” recalled Lutsenko, who wears his hair close-shaven in a style favored by racketeers and security men alike.

The search was far from thorough: They found his knife but not the pistol, which fell onto his seat, or his automatic weapon, concealed in a bag, or his FSB identification card.

“I sat down on my weapon and waited for the proper moment when I could deal with the terrorists,” Lutsenko recounted.

As the men searched his FSB colleague, Lutsenko sprang into action.

“I grabbed my pistol and ordered everyone to lie on the floor. I told the startled passengers that I was an officer of the anti-terrorist unit and that the people could feel safe,” Lutsenko said in an interview with Russian journalists Monday. His FSB colleague, a captain, brandished the automatic weapon.

The pair soon realized that their suspects were just security guards and joined forces with them, now determined to burst into the locked cockpit and overpower the hijacker, who was by then armed with not only a fake bomb but also a loaded pistol, courtesy of the security guards.

“Despite this, I felt sure that I could disarm the terrorist,” Lutsenko said. “I had everything I needed: weapons, a bulletproof vest and even a special riot helmet. But the pilots decided to act according to instructions received from the ground, which were to refuel and fly to Israel.”

The hijacker, in his late 20s, initially threatened to blow up the plane, claiming he had a remote-controlled device and a bomb concealed on board.

Lutsenko criticized the young police officer who handed over the three pistols to the pilot in plain sight of everyone.

“This lack of caution by the policeman almost played a fatal role,” he said.

Lutsenko said the pilots initially gave the hijacker two of the pistols without clips but had to hand over the bullet clips and the third gun when he again threatened to blow up the plane.

In Israel, Amirkhanov gave himself up and presented officials with two letters and an audiotape, warning of his fears that the “white race” faces domination by Asian races. He is now in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison and is expected to be charged with hijacking.