Gen. Mordechai Hod, commander of Israel’s Air Force, said today that the pilot of the Libyan airliner had acted consistently “in a most suspicious manner” from the time of initial Israeli efforts to make contact by radio. If the pilot had been misrouted, Hod added, it would have been the “simplest thing” for him to heed the radioed instructions to land the airliner for interrogation and clarification.
Hod said the liner was flying over “a most sensitive and delicate area,” one of the most restricted sections under strict Israeli controls. He reported that when the Libyan Boeing 727 was sighted on Israeli radar and then seen over the Sinai, Israeli interceptor pilots were sent up to signal the pilot to land at Bir Gafgafa airfield nearby.
“We thought at first it was a navigational mistake but the stubbornness the pilot displayed in refusing to heed all of our signals led to suspicions that grew by the minute Hod said. He added that the pilot had lowered the undercarriage of the airliner and then tried to make a dash for the western side of the Suez Canal. He also said that the curtains on the windows of the plane were down and no passengers could be seen by the Israeli interceptor pilots. All these developments added to the growing suspicion and “we had to know what was going on,” the General added.
PILOT UNDERSTOOD SIGNALS
“A responsible captain, knowing he had more than 100 passengers for whom he was responsible, would not have acted as irresponsibly as this one did,” Hod asserted. He said it had been determined that the airliner captain understood the Israeli signals to land. He added that the debriefing of the Libyan co-pilot indicated that the pilots saw and understood the signals from the interceptors but apparently decided to try to get away.
Hod said that after 16 minutes of efforts to persuade the captain to land and with a minute to go before the airliner would have reached the Suez Canal, “we had no alternative but to do whatever we could to bring the airliner down and learn the circumstances of its penetration.” He emphasized that “we wanted to force him down, not to shoot him down.”
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