Leila Khaled

Just stumbled across a biography of this fascinating woman, about whom a new documentary has been made that looks fascinating. A DVD has been released but, alas, it’s Region 2.

It may be old news to you, but I had never heard of her (or seen these iconic photos). From the 2002 AlJazeera interview:

In 1969, aged 25 and armed with grenades and handguns, she became the first woman ever to hijack an airliner, diverting a TWA flight to Damascus, where she escaped after securing the release of hostages in exchange for political prisoners, and destroying the plane on the ground.

Leila went on to undergo plastic surgery, and repeat the exercise on a larger scale a year later, when she was involved in a coordinated series of hijack operations culminating in the exploding of three airliners in Jordan, and another in Egypt.

But Leila’s attempt to gain control of an El Al flight in Amsterdam went disastrously wrong. As she and her Nicaraguan accomplice Patrick Arguello attempted to storm the cabin midair, the pilot pulled the throttle, sending the plane into nosedive.