Extract: The Revolutionists by Jason Burke
In the 1970s, a network of radical extremists terrorised the West with intricately planned plane hijackings and hostage-takings. Drawing on decades of research, recently declassified government files, secret documents, and original interviews with hijackers, spies, witnesses and victims, Jason Burke takes us into the lives and minds of the perpetrators of these often-deadly operations. Through their eyes – and the eyes of the unrelenting agents who hunted them down – he uncovers a dark, complex world of loyalty, betrayal and commitment to radical change at any cost.
Read an exclusive extract from the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction shortlisted book The Revolutionists.
Prologue
They met at Stuttgart airport in the late morning of 5 September 1970. She knew only that ‘an American comrade’ would be waiting outside the terminal. He had been told just that ‘Shadia’ would find him there.
Handsome, with his dark hair combed back in a wave, a tailored blue-grey plaid suit matched with a blue shirt and tie, he was posing as one half of a wealthy, newly married Latin American couple on honeymoon in Europe. Sunglasses, false travel documents with stamps from countries favoured by tourists and his flawless Spanish completed the disguise.
She was the other half, pretty and petite in a navy-blue miniskirt, fitted jacket and matching shoes. A series of painful operations recently conducted by a surgeon in Beirut had altered her features, broadening her sharp nose and rounding her oval eyes. This, along with her Honduran passport in the name of Luna Maria Chavez Britto and striking companion, would convince even the most suspicious security staff that she was an innocent traveller.
Together, they flew from Stuttgart to Frankfurt, arriving in the early afternoon. There they checked into separate hotels before meeting for dinner in a recently opened restaurant on the top floor of the tower of a giant grain silo run by a local brewery. Looking out over the lights of western Europe’s financial centre, they discussed global revolution, the civil rights movement in the US and the armed struggle against Zionism, imperialism and capitalism. He spoke of the revolutionary Sandinista movement against the repressive right-wing regime in Nicaragua, where he was from. She described the recent history of the Palestinians, which was hers. Then they paid the bill, left the restaurant and went back to their hotels.
She fell asleep almost instantly and did not wake until the next morning, when the two of them returned to the airport and took another flight, this one delivering them to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport around midday. The El Al flight from Tel Aviv was due to arrive within three hours, making a short stop before flying on to New York. That’s when they would board.
Their luggage was checked and re-checked.They had rehearsed their answers but in the event a few words of Spanish and a smile were all it took to satisfy the first El Al security agent. ‘Do you have a weapon? Anything sharp or dangerous?’ a second asked. ‘Why would a girl like me have a dangerous weapon?’ she laughed. He apologised and waved her through.
‘Why would a girl like me have a dangerous weapon?’
Her partner was not overly troubled either, despite the converted Italian-made starting pistol jammed into the tight waistband of swim shorts he wore under his suit trousers. The gun had had all its metal parts removed and replaced with plastic substitutes to avoid detection by any scanners, but was still lethal. She was carrying two carefully concealed grenades, each about the size of a soft-drink can and made entirely of non-ferrous materials. These too went unnoticed. So far, everything had gone very smoothly.
The only setback was the absence of the two Palestinian men they were supposed to have met in the departure lounge. Both were big and would have intimidated anyone thinking of resisting, and their first-class seats were to have positioned them perfectly to secure the cabin. There had been no sign of either, but the young couple had decided to go ahead with the plan anyway.
It was both very complex and very simple. Three planes would be hijacked as they left European airports bound for the US. Two would be making stopovers, having departed originally from Israel. The third would be flying from Switzerland. Each plane would be commandeered by at least two hijackers, and no more than four. Once under their control, all three aircrafts would be diverted to a makeshift runway in Jordan, referred to as ‘Revolution Airport’. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) would then have possession of hundreds of passengers and three planes worth tens of millions of dollars, to be traded as ransom for prisoners in Israeli and western European jails. The attackers were instructed to be polite but firm. They were not to hurt anyone but could use their weapons to defend themselves if necessary.
The only plane on which they expected to meet resistance was the single El Al flight, as the Israeli airline now flew with armed air marshals among the passengers. The other flights were run by airlines that did not consider such precautions necessary.
Quite how the deal for the hostages and aircraft might be done was unclear, but the plan’s architects were confident such challenges would be met. Whatever happened, one thing was certain: a message would have been sent in the most forceful possible way that the Palestinians’ cause could not be ignored – not by leaders in the West, nor by rulers in the Arab world, nor by anyone trying to negotiate peace between Israel and its neighbours, nor by ordinary people anywhere on the planet.
Great care had been taken over the selection of the ten hijackers. The inclusion of the woman and her Nicaraguan-American companion was to demonstrate the international support that existed for the Palestinian cause as well as the PFLP’s own progressive politics and its commitment to ‘revolutionary struggles’ around the world. The young couple had been paired for practical reasons too: her frontline experience would complement his untested enthusiasm. Despite his involvement with the Sandinistas, he had never used a deadly weapon to threaten, let alone harm.
The couple took their seats in the first row in economy, just behind the first-class section. In his pocket, the young man carried his own US passport and a scrap of paper containing notes of their instructions written in Spanish. These included the order to attack within the first twenty minutes of the flight to avoid the risk of catastrophic depressurisation if the fuselage was punctured by a bullet or grenade shrapnel. She carried a prepared statement to read over the plane’s intercom once it was under their control.
As they sat waiting for take-off she observed that no one on board seemed to have recognised her.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
When she told him, he nodded and touched his fingers to his forehead in mock salute.
The minutes passed. They waited, as they had been instructed to do. Then the plane with its 138 passengers and ten crew taxied, took off, and climbed over the Dutch coast before setting a course due west, across Britain, Ireland and the Atlantic. Drinks were served, and then, after twenty-one minutes, with the plane now at 29,000 feet and just crossing the British coast over Clacton in Essex, it was time.