MILNET: Terrorist Events - September thru October 1989
The seven Americans aboard the French DC-10 jetliner that crashed in northern Africa included a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer returning home after two years as an English teacher in Chad.
Also on board was Bonnie Barnes Pugh, wife of the U.S. ambassador to Chad and four Americans who had been working at an oilfield in southern Chad.
A radical Shiite group Wednesday claimed responsibility for the downing of a jetliner, the airline UTA said. All 171 people aboard died. The airline said a bomb most likely caused the crash of the jetliner, which exploded Tuesday shortly after taking off from Chad for Paris.
Jim Flanigan, a Peace Corps spokesman in Washington, said Margaret Schutzius, 23, of Dallas, had completed her work in Chad and was headed home.
Miss Schutzius joined the Peace Corps in June 1987 as a secondary education teacher, he said. She had attended the University of Chicago before joining the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps has about 30 volunteers in Chad.
Exxon Corp. spokeswoman Sara Johnson in New York said two Americans working in southern Chad for the company's Esso Exploration & amp Production Chad Inc. subsidiary were also on the UTA flight.
They were petroleum geologist Mark Corder, 35, of Houston, and senior operation supervisor James Turlington, Sr., 48, of Bellville.
Miss Johnson said an Esso Resources Canada employee on loan to Exxon was also on the flight. Russell O. Jordan Jr, 29, a senior projects engineer, is Canadian, but listed his hometown as Houston, she said.
The Tulsa, Okla.-based Parker Drilling Co. said four of its employees were aboard the French airliner, including two Americans. They were returning home from a 28-day work rotation.
Parker Drilling spokesman Tim Colwell said the four men worked at a rig in southern Chad that Parker owns and operates under a contract with Exxon.
He identified the Parker employees as Pat Huff, 38, of Franklin, Texas; Donald Warner, 25, of Terry, Mont.; David Middleton, 38, of Rowland Gill, England, and a Bolivian truck driver, whose name was not released pending notification of relatives.
A camp medic, Warner had been with the company for a month.
Huff, a rig manager, liked working in oilfields overseas and never expressed any concerns about traveling, his mother said Wednesday.
"He had no fears,'' said Janice Huff, of Franklin. ``I said something to him a few months ago after so many planes had been going down and he said, `No, not really.' You always think it's going to happen to someone else.''
The State Department identified the seventh American as Mihai Ali Manestianu, but no further information was immediately available.
AP-NY-09-20-89 2118EDT
(C) Copyright 1989, Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
The dailies Liberation and Le Parisien said the discovery strengthened the link between last week's UTA crash and the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie,
Scotland.
The news accounts, quoting unidentified sources involved in the inquiry, said the presence of Semtex, a malleable and difficult-to-detect explosive made in Czechoslovakia, still had to be confirmed by laboratory tests in Paris.
Liberation reported the explosive may have been hidden in a shipment of farm chemicals put on the plane in Brazzaville, Congo, where it originated.
The plane disappeared less than an hour after takeoff following a stopover in N'Djamena, Chad. All 171 people aboard were killed.
French investigators have said it appears certain an ``explosive substance'' in a front cargo compartment caused the crash but have not elaborated publicly on what explosive may have been used.
The parallels between last week's crash and the Dec. 21 Lockerbie disaster have already been widely noted.
It is believed that a radio-cassette player rigged with Semtex was placed aboard the Pan Am flight in Frankfurt that made a change of planes in London before the explosion.
The Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command is considered the prime suspect behind that attack, though the group's leader Ahmed Jibril has denied involvement.
Police in West Germany seized an air pressure-activated bomb hidden in a radio when they raided houses and apartments occupied by suspected radical Palestinians in October last year.
Claims of responsibility for the UTA crash from anonymous callers in Beirut and London on behalf of the Moslem extremist group Islamic Jihad and a previously unknown Chadian organization have not been authenticated. French police appear to be treating the claims with great skepticism.
On Monday, Investigating Magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguieres, an anti-terrorism specialist heading the criminal investigation, officially called on the DST, France's counterespionage police, to aid in the probe, judicial sources said.
The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bruguieres made a specific written request to the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire for assistance. The sources said they did not know exactly what tasks the agency's officers were called on to undertake.
AP-NY-09-26-89 0811EDT
(C) Copyright 1989, Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Investigators are concentrating on an individual who may have had a grudge against the ship's captain, The Los Angeles Times reported, adding that international terrorism hasn't been ruled out as motive.
Authorities initially interpreted the bombing as a terrorist retribution for the mistaken downing of an Iranian commercial jetliner by the Vincennes, an Aegis-class guided missile cruiser commanded at the time by Capt. Will Rogers III.
Rogers' wife, Sharon, was alone in the van and narrowly escaped injury when it was destroyed March 10.
The Times, citing four unnamed sources, said investigators believe the attack may have been the result of an unnamed individual's animosity toward Capt. Rogers. Two sources said the suspect was an American citizen.
Tom Hughes, FBI special agent in charge in San Diego, refused to discuss any aspect of the six-month probe. ``We will have the same position we have in any ongoing investigation,'' he said, ``and that is `no comment.'''
Capt. Rogers expressed surprise.
``I have not the remotest idea of anyone who would take a personal vendetta against me or my family,'' the captain said.
Rogers was in charge of the Vincennes on July 3, 1988, when the commercial Iranian airliner was shot down over the Persian Gulf. All 290 people aboard the plane died.
Rogers told Navy investigators he thought the jetliner was an Iranian jet fighter preparing to attack his ship.
The Pentagon later concluded the ship's crew made crucial errors in their analysis of the aircraft and its intentions, but exonerated Rogers, in part because the airliner failed to respond to the Vincennes' repeated warnings.
AP-NY-10-01-89 0444EDT
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The FBI probe has shifted its focus to the possibility that the March 10 bombing was carried out by a U.S. citizen, unconnected with the military, who has a personal vendetta against Capt. Will C. Rogers III, The San Diego Union reported Monday. The paper quoted a Navy official who asked to remain anonymous.
Federal agents have identified such an individual and are checking his alibis, but no further identification or elaboration was available, a Justice Department official said.
The Los Angeles Times quoted four unidentified sources Sunday who also said the FBI probe is focusing on the personal vendetta theory. Two of those sources said the individual being investigated was a U.S. citizen.
The pipe bomb explosion drew national attention because investigators initially interpreted it as terrorist retribution for the mistaken downing eight months earlier of an Iranian commercial jetliner by the Vincennes, an Aegis-class guided missile cruiser commanded by Rogers.
All 290 people aboard the plane died. Rogers' wife, Sharon, was alone in the van but got out uninjured moments before it was destroyed by fire at an intersection near the couple's home in San Diego, where the Vincennes is based.
Tom Hughes, FBI special agent in charge in San Diego, refused to discuss any aspect of the six-month probe. ``We will have the same position we have in any ongoing investigation,'' he said, ``and that is `no comment.'''
Rogers expressed surprise at the possibility of a personal motive in the attack, saying, ``I have not the remotest idea of anyone who would take a personal vendetta against me or my family.''
AP-NY-10-02-89 0841EDT
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The two were seized at 8:30 a.m. (1:30 a.m. EDT) after they left their headquarters in a white Peugeot car, heading for a Red Cross center in this port 40 miles south of Beirut, police said.
The Beirut office of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross refused to comment.
Police said they could not yet provide the names of the two men.
There was no claim of responsibility for the abduction, the latest in a chain that targeted relief workers with foreign humanitarian organizations in south Lebanon.
Most of the previous south Lebanon kidnappings were blamed by police on Fatah-Revolutionary Council, the radical Palestinian guerrilla group headed by terrorist mastermind
Abu Nidal is the nom de guerre of Sabri al-Banna, a former official in Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement who split with the Palestinian leader in 1973.
Sidon houses the teeming Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh and the nearby town of Mieh Mieh, where Abu Nidal's group maintain bases.
The Red Cross pulled all its 31 Swiss delegates from Lebanon on Dec. 20 after the abduction of Peter Winkler, a Red Cross official in Sidon. The Swiss man was kidnapped Nov. 17, 1988 and released Dec. 16.
News reports in Switzerland and Lebanon said at the time that Winkler's kidnappers threatened new anti-Swiss attacks, claiming the Red Cross and Swiss authorities reneged on a pledge to pay ransom for Winkler's freedom.
The Red Cross mission returned to Lebanon Jan. 22 after obtaining pledges from all parties in Lebanon that the humanitarian organization would not be subjected to any attacks.
Apart from the two Swiss abducted today, 16 Westerners, including eight Americans, are held hostage in Lebanon.
Most of them are held by pro-Iranian Shiite Moslem extremist factions. The longest held is American journalist Terry A. Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press, who was kidnapped March 16, 1985.
AP-NY-10-06-89 0427EDT
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Ministry spokesman Clemens Birrer said the part-time flight attendant was kidnapped by armed civilians during a visit to the Mediterranean port of Tripoli.
The woman's name and age were withheld at the request of her parents, Birrer said.
Her disappearance brings to 19 the number of Westerners missing in Lebanon, including eight Americans. Most are believed captives of Shiite Moslems loyal to Iran.
Birrer said the woman's parents asked authorities not to publicize the case, but he confirmed the kidnapping after being asked to comment on unattributed news reports.
Switzerland requested help from Syria because Syrian troops control much of northern Lebanon, he added.
Last Friday, two Swiss International Red Cross workers, Elio Erriquez and Emmanual Christen, were abducted in southern Lebanon.
There have been no demands and no claims of responsibility in the kidnappings so far, and Birrer said Swiss officials did not assume the woman's abduction was connected to the most recent kidnappings.
Lebanese police said Monday that Erriquez and Christen are being held by radical Palestinian guerrillas led by terrorist mastermind Abu Nidal, whose group denied taking part.
PLO spokesmen last week accused Abu Nidal's group of the kidnappings, linking them to a Shiite Moslem militant, Mohammed Hariri, who is serving a life sentence in Switzerland for hijacking an Air Afrique jetliner in 1987 and killing a French passenger.
Longest-held of the Western hostages is Terry Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press, who was kidnapped March 16, 1985.
AP-NY-10-12-89 1833EDT
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All but 4,000 were released after questioning, said the spokesman, who commented on condition of anonymity. About 3,000 police officers using dogs and backed by light armored cars took part in the mass roundup.
Hector Delgado Parker, senior news executive of Channel 5 and former adviser to President Alan Garcia, was abducted Wednesday. The gunmen shot up his armored-plated car, killed his driver and badly wounded his bodyguard in the ambush, police said.
Police said pamphlets from the pro-Cuban Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement were found at the site. Witnesses said that up to eight kidnappers took part.