Piracy Above, Politics Below

As the Polish LOT airliner approached East Berlin on a flight out of Warsaw, two young East Germans walked into the crew cabin. One of them clubbed the flight engineer with his gun butt. The other pressed his revolver against Pilot Ryszard Dabrowski's neck and told him to head for West Berlin. Two Soviet MIGs screamed up alongside the IIyushin-18 turboprop, but not even their buzzing could dissuade the hijackers. When the plane landed at Tegel Airport in the French sector of West Berlin, they handed over passports and guns (which turned out to be unloaded) and announced: "We are asking for asylum."

Thus did one of the less attractive customs of the West come to the Communist world for the first time since 1956, when a Hungarian airliner was seized and diverted to West Germany. In another episode, a gun-waving 17-year-old from Detroit forced the crew of a Mexico City to Miami Pan American jetliner to fly to Havana. The two hijackings brought to 56 the total reported this year (47 to Havana alone). They also proved once again that no airliner anywhere is immune.

Issue of Asylum. Extradition and punishment of hijackers could discourage the practice, but as the LOT incident showed, piracy in the air is encouraged by politicking on the ground. Poland demanded that the two East Germans be sent to Warsaw for prosecution. But French occupation officials in West Berlin, on instructions from Paris, granted them asylum. The hijackers were not exactly home free. France announced plans to try them in its military-mission court in Berlin on as yet unspecified charges. The compromise will not please those who argue that, as President Nixon told the U.N. last month, "sky piracy cannot be ended as long as the pirates receive asylum." While most nations have stiff antihijacking statutes for their own citizens (U.S. law provides a maximum penalty of death), there is no international law on the subject. Nor is there yet much sentiment outside the U.S. for modifying the right of political asylum to dissuade hijackers.

Next month 116 nations will begin observing the International Civil Aviation Organization's Tokyo Convention, which provides for prompt return of hijacked planes and passengers—but not the hijackers. The ICAO has drafted a treaty that would make prosecution or extradition of hijackers mandatory, but its chances for approval are poor.