Integrity Score 240
No Records Found
👍
*Chapter 3
International terrorism began and proliferated in the late 1960s. Between 1960 and 1967 there was a high incidence of aerial hijackings of civilian aircraft and taking of passengers of hostages. Most of the incidents were, however, committed for private or personal reasons by persons seeking political asylum, escaping criminal process, evading family responsibilities, suffering from psychological disturbances, etc.
In 1968, aerial hijacking and the taking of hostages acquired a political colour. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a part of the PLO, began hijacking for political blackmail. It was initiated in April 1968 with the seizure of an El Al Israel airliner which was commandeered to Algiers.
The erstwhile Soviet Union, which patronized terrorism as “revolutionary” violence, became itself affected by politically motivated hijacking. Even then it continued to extend international support to those nation and organizations which had supported terror such as Syria, Iraq, Libya, and PLO. An informal terror network soon emerged.
The International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Security Agency (KGB), and the Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU) played the major role in building and guiding this terror network. Of these three organs of the Soviet state, the Party’s International Department, headed by Boris Ponomarev, had been the most important Soviet agency for mobilizing and facilitating support of terrorism. The Department consistently promoted widespread “revolutionary violence,” even while taking care to project the illusory image that the Soviet Union was abiding by the “spirit of peaceful co-existence.”
To be continued…