Passengers 62 Injuries (non-fatal) 0 Aircraft type Tupolev Tu-134 Summary Aircraft hijacking Operator LOT Polish Airlines Survivor 69 | Crew 7 Survivors 69 Date 30 August 1978 Destination Berlin Schönefeld Airport Fatalities 0 | |
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Site Hijacker forced the aircraft to land at U.S. Air Force base at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin Similar 1978 LAV HS 748 accident, 1978 Iranian Chinook, 1978 Balkan Bulgarian, Continental Airlines Flight 603, Icelandic Airlines Flight 001 | ||
LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 hijacking was the hijacking of a LOT Polish Airlines that occurred on 30 August 1978. The hijackers from East Germany (GDR / DDR) were seeking political asylum in West Germany (FRG / BRD). The plane landed safely, and the primary hijacker was tried and convicted by a German jury in the specially convened United States Court for Berlin and sentenced to time served, the nine months he had already served during pretrial detention.
Contents
Background
The GDR citizens Hans Detlef Alexander Tiede (aka Detlev Tiede) and his friend Ingrid Ruske and her 12-year-old daughter had travelled to Poland to meet there with Ruske's West German boyfriend Horst Fischer, who planned to bring false West German papers to enable their escape by ferry to West German Travemünde. However, Fischer did not appear, and after four days of waiting for him Ruske and Tiede – not having any information – concluded, that Fischer must have been arrested when travelling through East Germany. Their conclusion was right, Fischer had indeed been arrested and later sentenced to eight years of jail in East Germany for preparing their Republikflucht (escape from GDR), outlawed as a crime by East German legislation. After two years Fischer was released after the West German federal government had paid a ransom to East Germany. Ruske and Fischer married after his release in West Germany.
Ruske and Tiede then concluded that they were trapped, with arrest awaiting them when returning to East Germany. So they developed the plan to hijack a plane, flying to East Berlin's Schönefeld Airport, to the U.S. Air Force base at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin. They bought a toy starting pistol in a Polish fleamarket, and then booked three tickets on LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 from Gdańsk, Poland, to East Berlin.
Hijacking
On 30 August 1978, Tiede and Ruske hijacked a Polish LOT Tupolev Tu-134 airliner with 62 passengers making Flight 165 from Gdańsk to East Berlin. Tiede, armed with the toy starting pistol, took a flight attendant hostage and succeeded in forcing the aircraft to land at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin.
Of the 62 passengers, there were 50 GDR citizens, 10 Polish citizens, a man from Munich and a woman from West Berlin. The passengers were given the opportunity to remain in West Berlin or to return to East Berlin. Not only did Tiede, Ruske and her daughter claim sanctuary in West Berlin, but so did another seven East Germans: a radiology assistant from Erfurt, a couple with two children and a couple from Leipzig, although the radiology assistant returned to East Germany the next day. The remaining passengers were interviewed and taken to East Berlin on a bus.
Trial
The West German Federal Government was very reluctant to prosecute Tiede and Ruske because of the West German policy of supporting the right of East Germans to flee oppression in the GDR. But the United States government had just spent years, finally successfully, persuading the East German government to sign a hijacking treaty. Consequently, the case was prosecuted in the never-before-convened United States Court for Berlin.
Over the prosecutor's objections, US federal judge Herbert Jay Stern ruled that the defendants were entitled to be tried by a jury, a procedure abolished in Germany by the Emminger Reform of 1924. The case against Tiede's co-defendant Ingrid Ruske was dismissed because she had not been notified of her Miranda rights before signing a confession. Tiede was acquitted on three charges, including hijacking and possession of a firearm, but convicted of taking a hostage. The jury found Tiede guilty of hostage-taking, but not guilty of acts against the safety of civil aviation, deprivation of liberty and battery. The minimum sentence for hostage-taking was three years. However, Stern sentenced Tiede to time served during pretrial detention, about nine months. Stern accounted for Tiede's emergency situation and plight to face imprisonment in East Germany for attempted Republikflucht.
In popular culture
The 1984 book which Judge Stern wrote about the event, Judgment in Berlin, was made into a movie in 1988. Martin Sheen depicted him.