The New York Times · New York, New York · 2 August 1972

CP-1972-025

Israel Tries 2 Arab Women in Hijacking

By HENRY KAMM, Special to The New York Times

Scan 488 × 974 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

RISHON LE ZION, Israel, Aug. 1 — Two young Arab women accused of participating in the hijacking in May of a Sabena airliner bound for the Tel Aviv airport went on trial today before a military tribunal.

Two men, the principals in the act of piracy, were shot to death when Israeli troops stormed aboard the Boeing 707 at the airport, in an operation directed by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. A young Israeli woman died later of wounds she suffered in the assault.

The plane, seized during a scheduled flight from Brussels to Tel Aviv, landed at its destination on the hijackers’ orders. In return for its release, the hijackers demanded the freeing of about 300 Arab terrorists from Israeli prisons. They threatened to blow up the plane and its passengers if their demand was not met.

The women defendants — Rima Issa Tannous, 21 years old, and Therese Halasseh, 18—faced the three-member court, including a woman major, in the same barracks at the Sarafand army camp where last month Kozo Okamoto was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the airport massacre by Japanese terrorists on May 30.

The two women pleaded not guilty to a four-count indictment without, however, challenging the accuracy of the account of the acts of which they are accused. Their court-appointed lawyers made evident that they intended to concede the essentials of the prosecution’s version of the dramatic events in midair and in the long hours on the ground preceding the final shoot-out.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead or date line, so its date and newspaper rest on the record it arrived with, not on anything visible in the scan.

Context added by this archive

Date check: No masthead or folio line survives on this clipping; the top edge carries only the bottoms of lines from the stories above (“a national scandal, a case” / “away from Bruay, and when the” / “Brigitte.” When a man with”). The credit line under the byline reads “Special to The New York Times”, agreeing with `pub`.

The dateline reads “RISHON LE ZION, Israel, Aug. 1” and the photo caption says the charges were read “yesterday”, both consistent with publication on 1972-08-02, but no date appears on the scan.

Cite this clipping

More from The New York Times

• The Maine Colony in PalestineThe New York Times · 12 November 1866
• Jewish Colonization in PalestineThe New York Times · 9 December 1883
• Jewish State in Palestine OpposedThe New York Times · 9 July 1897
• ZIONIST CONGRESS IN BASELThe New York Times · 31 August 1897
• ROME FEARS THE ZIONISTSThe New York Times · 12 September 1897
• PROGRESS OF ZIONISMThe New York Times · 16 December 1901
• 852 more from this paper in the full text →

More from the 1970s

• Beirut Moves Against Guerrillas To Quell Israeli RaidsThe Times · 29 February 1972
• Giant Step for Arab WomenThe New York Times · 29 February 1972
• Israeli Raid Forces Beirut To Face Up To Guerrilla ProblemColumbia Record · 3 March 1972
• Israel to Discipline Officers In Bedouins’ DisplacementThe New York Times · 27 March 1972
• Artist Seeking Mideast TogethernessThe Daily Progress · 3 May 1972
• Israel cites POW torture; Palestinians ask statehoodThe Morning Call · 10 June 1972
• All 338 clippings from the 1970s →