Ex Security Agent Releases Account
OpenLife News reports that Dennis Amachree, a retired assistant director of the Department of State Services (DSS), has recounted how Nigeria’s secret police assisted the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the arrest of a deadly plane hijacker, Omar Rezaq, in Lagos.
Omar Rezaq is a Lebanese-born Palestinian militant who is the lone surviving hijacker of EgyptAir Flight 648 in 1985.
He was a member of Abu Nidal Organization.
The plane was hijacked by a group of three people. The remaining two hijackers were killed during in-flight shooting with the plane’s sky marshal, Methad Mustafa Kamal.
During the process, the Egyptian commandos stormed the hijacked plane.
Revealing how the arrest was effected, Amachree narrated the operation in his new book ‘DSS @40: My Journey Behind the Shield’, a memoir chronicling his four decades in Nigeria’s intelligence service.
According to Amachree, in July 1993, he received a call from Peter Nwaoduah, then director-general of the State Security Service (SSS), instructing him to prepare for “an imminent visit from a United States Embassy security team.”
Nwaoduah directed him to cooperate fully with the team but provided no further details about what Amachree described as a “high-stakes” mission.
“Less than an hour later, a contingent of FBI special agents arrived at my office. They confirmed that the Director General had briefed them, and we immediately pivoted to the operational task at hand,” Amachree wrote.
Amachree said the FBI informed him that their target was Rezaq, who was travelling from Accra, Ghana, to Nigeria on a Ghana Airways flight bound for the Muritala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) in Lagos.
“The objective was to secure his arrest with absolute discretion. Given the subject’s history of extreme violence, the agents emphasised that the operation required the highest level of professional precision,” he said.
He said he assigned one of his officers to escort the FBI team to the boarding bridge, where they could monitor the aircraft’s arrival on the tarmac.
“Simultaneously, I reached out to my friend, the military Airport Commandant, John Ojikutu. After I briefed him on the sensitive nature of the operation, he acted with impressive speed, mobilising a unit of armed airmen to establish a secure perimeter around the arrival zone, ensuring we were prepared for any potential hostile reaction,” he added.
Amachree detailed that he also directed a privately chartered FBI Gulfstream IV aircraft to a strategic position to facilitate a swift departure after Rezaq’s arrest.
When the Ghana Airways flight landed, Amachree said he intercepted the suspect and completed the handover to the FBI agents, who immediately departed Nigeria with Rezaq aboard the chartered aircraft.
According to Amachree, “the entire ground operation, executed with surgical efficiency, took exactly 15 minutes.”
Rezaq was convicted in the US in 1996 on charges that included air piracy and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Amachree said the successful operation earned him a formal plaque of commendation from then US President Bill Clinton.
Omar Rezaq ’s Life, Hijack History And Trial
Born in 1958, the Lebanese- Palestinian militant is the lone surviving hijacker of EgyptAir Flight 648 in 1985.
He was a member of Abu Nidal Organization. The plane was hijacked by a group of three people.
The remaining two hijackers were killed, either during in-flight shooting with the plane’s sky marshal, Methad Mustafa Kamal after Egyptian commandos stormed the hijacked plane.
Early life and Activities
Rezaq gave his name as Omar Marzouki and used a Tunisian passport when boarding the plane at Athens airport, but later admitted that he is of Palestinian origin.
The FBI determined that Omar Marzouki was his real name, while “Omar Mohammed Ali Rezaq” was an alias, as its initials (O.M.A.R.).
After the hijack and during hours of negotiations while the plane was on the ground at Luqa airport in Malta, Rezaq shot five passengers, three of whom survived. On 24 November 1985, Egyptian commandos set explosives that ignited a fire, suffocating many of the passengers.
Rezaq was wounded in a subsequent shootout (his left lung was pierced by a bullet and attacked with a hatchet by the pilot), but recovered and was arraigned in a Maltese court on 12 December 1986.
The preliminary inquiry lasted until 3 April 1987, and on 2 November 1988, Rezaq pleaded guilty to seven of the nine charges against him.
He pleaded guilty on the illegal arrest of crew and passengers, the deaths of Nitzan Mendelson and Scarlett Marie Rogenkamp and the attempted killings of Methad Mustafa Kamal, Patrick Scott Baker, Jacqueline Nink Pflug and Tamar Artzi including illegal possession of arms and explosives.
The first two charges were later withdrawn.
Rezaq was sentenced to the maximum 25 years’ imprisonment, less the years and months he had already spent in prison.
On appeal, the sentence was confirmed on 20 April 1989. Rezaq served only seven years in Malta and was released.
As a free man under an assumed name, he went to Accra, Ghana where, at the request of the American Embassy Regional Security Officer Jerald H. Barnes, he was detained by the Ghana government and remained there until July 1993.
Travel to Nigeria
Ghanaian authorities did not give Rezaq to the United States but told them that he planned to go to Nigeria.
Rezaq flew to Lagos in July 1993; U.S. intelligence officials were on board his flight to monitor him.
He was arrested and underwent extraordinary rendition by members of the DSS, who flew him to the U.S.
Rezaq’s arrest was the result of an agreement between the governments of the United States and Nigeria.
When Rezaq arrived at the airport, Nigerian officials denied him entry since he did not have a passport, something they knew beforehand, and placed him on the first aircraft departing Nigeria, a Gulfstream IV leased by the U.S government.
FBI agents arrested him, fingerprinted him, and flew back to the U.S.
On 19 July 1996, after a month-long trial in Washington, D.C., Rezaq was sentenced to life in prison on a single count of air piracy.
Although air piracy resulting in death is a capital offense under federal law, Attorney General Janet Reno had declined to seek the death penalty.
Later life
U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth recommended that any request for parole made after the 10-year period should be rejected. An appeal was rejected on 6 February 1998.
Omar Rezaq, register number 20267-016, is imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary, Marion, located in Southern Precinct, Williamson County, Illinois.
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