6 September 2008
opinion
Kampala — At the height of the National Resistance Army (NRA) armed struggle led by Yoweri Museveni, the rebels staged a daring hijack of a Uganda Airlines plane in 1985. Firoz Khimji, the co-pilot, recounted the incident to Matthias Mugisha.
SOMEBODY swung the door open and stumbled into the cockpit of the Uganda Airlines Fokker Friendship 27 plane. We all looked behind. We saw a man. To our horror, he had a gun. A pistol. He cocked it and pointed it at my face. He was the kind of man who would not hesitate to shoot if we did not co-operate. His name was Innocent Bisangwa.
"Are you Firoz Khimji?" he asked.
I nodded.
"This is a hijack," he roared. We raised our hands. By now, we were flying over Masindi town. "Is the plane on autopilot? Who is flying the plane?" Bisangwa, gun still in hand, inquired.
May 10, 1985 had started like any other day. I was supposed to fly a Uganda Airlines Fokker Friendship 27 plane to Arua and back. Early that morning at 8:00am, I left my home in Kampala and took a cab to Entebbe Airport. We lived on one of the floors of the Standard Chartered Bank building. My father worked for the same bank.
When I reached Entebbe, I was told I would have to do an extra flight due to the demand. The first flight was at 10:00am, while the second one would be in the afternoon. We were also told that the leader of the Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF) would be on board. The UNRF was one of the rebel groups that had joined the Tito Lutwa government.
At the flight dispatch office, we did the usual flight preparations and boarded the aircraft with the flight plan and related documents. The same aircraft had flown in from Arua following an overnight stop. On this flight, I would be the co-pilot and Captain Justus Tinka, the pilot.
The odd thing about this day was that security at the airport was rather lax. The plane had a capacity of 44 passengers. All boarded, including the three hijackers. The UNRF leader was not among those on board. We were told he would be on the second flight.
One of the passengers, unlike his name, was not innocent. He had a pistol. He had been recently arrested by the government security forces, but had managed to escape. He was suspected of belonging to the National Resistance Army (NRA) rebels led by Yoweri Museveni. His name was Innocent Bisangwa. The NRA rebels were by then operating in western Uganda. His two other accomplices boarded the plane with two dismantled Uzi guns concealed in their bags.
I think security at the airport was lax for some reason. Museveni had many sympathisers. As I would later learn, I was the only crew member who had no idea of what was going to happen.
First Officer Charles Nyakana joined us in the cockpit. He had that very morning flown the same plane from Arua. Nyakana, though now off-duty, told us he had private business to wind up in Arua. He asked for a jump seat to Arua. Tinka let him have it.
I used to fly to Kasese on private missions taking supplies for the Red Cross. Therefore, I was familiar with the airfield. Tinka and Nyakana had over the previous days been asking me for details regarding the airstrip. Later, I would find out why.
At 10:05am, after everybody had boarded, the aircraft's twin engines coughed into life. We taxied to the runway for take-off. Five minutes later, we were airborne. It was a sunny morning. We climbed to 18,000 feet and cruised at 420km/h towards Arua. We never got there.
On board this particular flight were five German missionary doctors who had set foot in Uganda and Africa for the first time the previous day.
Funny things started happening in the cabin. Two items dropped from one of the passengers' hand luggage. The passenger seated behind him alerted him. The owner of the luggage looked down and casually picked up what had fallen. They were two bullets.
Moments afterwards, the same passenger walked towards the toilet section of the plane with his bag. Soon, another one, also carrying a bag, joined him. The two men later stormed out of the toilet. Each of them had Uzi guns. Within seconds, they had taken control of the cabin.
Suddenly, a third man, sitting among the passengers, sprung up with a pistol in his hand. He headed for the cockpit in the direction of the flight attendant who was collecting sandwiches to serve the passengers. When the attendant saw the gun, the tray fell from his hands and he ran back towards the cabin.
The Germans were very scared. They raised their hands up and called on the gunmen not to shoot them for they had been the first in raising their hands.
We heard a noise. Someone was trying to open the door to the cockpit. In fact the door was not locked. It opens inwards, but the person on the other side was trying to pull instead of pushing it open. After a few attempts, he apparently realised his mistake and decided to push open the door. Since he expected it to be locked, he used a lot of force and nearly lost his balance as he stumbled into the cockpit. It was Bisangwa. He was holding a gun.
"What is our position?" he asked. We told him we were over Masindi. "Steer a heading of 201 degrees and show me that you are doing it. Show me your compass," he commanded.
As a professional requirement, we begged him to allow us to inform Entebbe that we were changing course and he agreed. "We have been hijacked," we announced.
"You have been hijacked? Confirm," replied the person in the control tower at Entebbe, sounding very shocked.
"Where are you flying to?" Entebbe wanted to know.
"Tell them we are going west," Bisangwa commanded, before ordering us to cut off communication.
"No more communication. Switch off your radios," he commanded. We complied. When later we pressed him to tell us where we were going, he said Kasese. Later, I pieced together the puzzle when I remembered that Tinka and Nyakana had asked me for details about the runaway at Kasese airfield.
The two had wanted me to be on this flight, because I was more conversant with landing in Kasese. The two were in fact part of the hijacking team. It was only me who was in the dark. Still, later, I also came to know that this particular hijacking was two days late. Bisangwa told us to select him a certain radio frequency. He wanted to talk to his colleagues somewhere. We did, but when he talked, there was no response.
We started descending. It was cloudy. We knew there was some high ground, but we could not see the hills. Finally when we saw the ground, we were 500 feet above the hills and we had to locate Kasese by "dead reckoning" (manually).
"Put out the landing gear and first fly over Kasese airfield before landing," Bisangwa instructed.
We landed around 11:00am. We were surrounded by armed kadogos (child soldiers). We stayed inside the plane as Bisangwa went outside to talk to some soldiers. When he came back, he instructed us to come out one by one in two lines, one for men and the other for ladies. Everybody was thoroughly checked. More soldiers entered the plane to check the luggage. There was an army uniform in one of the bags. The owner was taken away.
The rest of us were taken into the terminal building. Before leaving for the terminal building, I walked around the plane to secure it. I was wrapping the propellers with a canvas sheet when Bisangwa called me. "Don't worry. You will be okay and you will go home," he assured me. It was a long, long time before I regained my freedom.
In the terminal building, Frank Guma, who was by then, I think, chief of logistics, gave us some biscuits.
Some of the passengers were crying. One NRA commander told us they had hijacked the plane because it was being used to ferry troops from Arua and Gulu to fight the NRA. They took us by bus to Margherita Hotel in Kasese, where they told us to eat and drink anything we wanted. Though we were not allowed to go outside the hotel, we had a party for the first two nights. We were kept there for 26 days.
At the hotel, I met some Red Cross staff who I had met before in Kasese, because I used to do freelance flying with Bel Air bringing in supplies for both UNICEF and the Red Cross.
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