Trial Opens Before Military for Two Girl Terrorists in Sabena Hijack Attempt

In the same narrow barracks converted into a courtroom at the Sarafand army base where Japanese gunman Kozo Okamoto was tried, convicted and sentenced last month, trial began today of the two young Arab girls charged with participation in the abortive terrorist attempt to hijack a Sabena Airlines plane at Lydda Airport in May.

It was the same scene too in the positioning of television cameras, the same elevated judges’ bench and the same security measures applied for the Okamoto trial but there was also much less tension, perhaps because of the “woman’s touch.” The defendants are girls, their escorts are girl MPs and the bench includes a woman judge, Zippora Neriya.

But the charges against Rimma Aossa Tannous and Therese Asskhak Saleiman Khalsa are serious, indeed, serious enough to entail the death penalty, which the three-member military panel is qualified to impose. Those charges include membership in a group which committed offenses with weapons, explosive charges, bearing of weapons, placing a bomb in an airliner with intent to cause injury or death and damage to property, and membership in an illegal organization–El Fatah.

The tribunal is made up of Lt. Col. Aharon Halperin. Major Yehoshua Ben Zion, both jurists, and Major Neriya; Yaacob Heningman is defense attorney for 19-year-old Acre-born Miss Khalsa. Eliezer Karmi is representing Miss Tannous, 21, the nurse born in Amman and adopted by the Tannous family of Bethlehem.

The colorfully-dressed young Arab girls presented a picture of innocence but they were the same terrorists who, with two male companions, spread panic among nearly 100 passengers on Sabena flight 71 from Brussels via Vienna to Tel Aviv on May 9. Those present included the father of Miss Khalsa, whose initial reaction to the news of the attempted hijack was that he no longer recognized the defendant as his daughter. However, he also said that she regretted what she had done, that her flight from Israel to Lebanon had been “influenced” by “other people” and her contacting the Black September gang was a result of her “falling into the hands” of those people.

The young defendants reacted differently in responding to the court’s formal request on whether they were guilty or not guilty. Miss Tannous admitted to the facts in the charges but pleaded not guilty to the charges as such. She contended she did what she did against her will. She declared she had been “abducted” from her job as a nurse in Jordan, taken to the underground camp against her will and given the Sabena assignment against her will. Miss Khalsa entered a “not guilty” plea to all charges.

The first witness for the prosecution was a passenger on the airline, who described the events of the flight and the takeover of the plane by the would-be hijackers on the last leg of the flight from Vienna. He said the two girl defendants took passports from the passengers as each of the girls held in turn a box they said was connected to a battery to detonate a bomb on the plane so that “Israel will learn its lesson.”

The witness said Miss Tannous was holding a live grenade when Israeli commandoes burst into the plane shouting in Hebrew to everyone not to move. The witness said he shouted to the commandoes “to be careful because the girl sitting next to. me was holding the unlocked grenade.” One of the commandoes approached her and she handed him the grenade in such a way that he could take it without detonating it. A police sergeant testified briefly before the trial was adjourned. He will continue tomorrow when the hearing is resumed.