On August 19, 1990, a group of Soviet prisoners, who were transported by plane, disarmed the guards with the help of weapons brought aboard in advance and seized the liner. In the hands of the air pirates were more than 40 passengers and crew members. Threatening to detonate a bomb, the prisoners demanded to be taken to Pakistan, where they hoped to avoid prosecution for their crimes. But there a completely different fate awaited them. Life found out the circumstances of one of the most daring crimes in Soviet history.
The Tu-154 aircraft of Aeroflot was supposed to make a regular flight on the Neryungri - Yakutsk route. Distances in Yakutia are huge, there is a road network, but the easiest way to communicate between cities is by air transport. More than 800 kilometers from Neryungri (the second largest city in the region) to the capital of Yakutia. So the easiest way to get there is to get on a plane.
It is for this reason that there was a rather unusual practice in Yakutia for the Soviet era - to transport arrested persons along with ordinary passengers on regular flights. Although formally they were always accompanied by escorts, it often happened that there were much more prisoners than guards.
So it was on August 19, 1990. A group of 15 people were to leave Neryungri, who were in the city temporary detention center on suspicion of committing serious crimes. The group included both really dangerous criminals, for example, accused of murder, robbery, racketeering, grievous bodily harm, repeat offenders, and petty thieves and vehicle hijackers.
Only three escorts were to accompany this group. Moreover, for some reason, there were not enough handcuffs for everyone (there were only three copies), and almost all dangerous passengers traveled without handcuffs. Probably, the department decided that they still would not go anywhere from the plane.
On board
In the morning, seven crew members, 36 passengers and 15 criminals being transported boarded a Tu-154 at the airport in Neryungri. The liner took off safely and began to climb. A few minutes after take-off, an alarm was received from a flight attendant who was in the cabin. A minute later, she entered the cockpit and handed them a note, from which it followed that the plane had been hijacked. The terrorists threatened to blow up the plane if the aircraft commander did not obey their orders.
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It turned out that a few minutes after takeoff, one of the leaders of the bandits by the name of Isakov (a former athlete accused of racketeering) took out a sawed-off shotgun and pointed it at a woman with a child, threatening to shoot them if the guards did not hand over their weapons. Another leader of the criminals by the name of Evdokimov (who had three previous convictions behind him) took out a bag with wires sticking out of it and said that it was a bomb and if their demands were not met, the plane would be blown up.
As it turned out later, the criminals did not have a bomb, they passed off a large bar of laundry soap for it. But the bleed was real. One of the criminals bribed an employee of the temporary detention center, and he handed him a sawn-off shot shortly before the transfer.
The bandits thought out the situation well. The militiamen, although they were armed, did not dare to start a firefight in the aircraft cabin. Firstly, the risk of hurting ordinary passengers was too great, secondly, there was a risk of damaging the plane, and thirdly, the terrorists threatened to detonate a bomb if they started shooting. The escorts laid down their arms and joined the rest of the hostages.
Meanwhile, Isakov went into the cockpit and demanded that the plane be returned to Neryungri. The bandits wanted to take with them two accomplices from the local detention center. On the ground, a capture group was already waiting for them. However, the local authorities did not dare to act.
The release of the plane was postponed. The liner was refueled. In addition, other demands of the bandits were satisfied. They were given two machine guns, two pistols, three radios and several body armor. They also wanted to get parachutes, but then they were convinced that they were not necessary. In the case of an attempt to jump with a parachute at full speed from such an airliner, they would instantly turn into bloody stuffing.
In exchange for two of their accomplices from the IVS, weapons and radios, they released all the women and children on board. Four more (according to other sources - six) prisoners refused to participate in this terrorist epic and voluntarily left the plane. Mostly these were people accused of not the most serious crimes. They faced a suspended sentence or very short sentences, and they chose not to risk and participate in air piracy, which automatically increased their sentence by 15 years.
The last attempt to influence the bandits "in an amicable way" was made when the police brought the parents of one of the bandit leaders, Isakov, to the airport. However, their attempts to reach out to their son ended in failure.
The plane with the remaining hostages headed for Novosibirsk. But the bandits changed their minds on the way: fearing a trap, they ordered the pilot to change course. Now the plane was flying to Krasnoyarsk. There the liner was refueled, after which it moved to Tashkent.
This was the final Soviet point. Obviously, the invaders were going to fly abroad. But even they themselves did not know where exactly. Apparently, they had a plan to hijack the aircraft, but there was no further action plan. In Tashkent, the option of assault on the captured aircraft was again considered, but it was again decided to abandon it. The hostages, together with the crew and the bandits, spent the night in Tashkent. The crew was released to spend the night outside the plane, while the passengers and bandits remained inside.
Pakistan
At about half past seven in the morning on August 20, the plane took off from Tashkent. Apparently, it was then that the invaders came up with a strange idea to send a plane to Pakistan. It's hard to say what exactly motivated them to do this. Soviet security forces tried to convince the criminals to go to India through the pilots of the ship. But they suspected something was wrong and demanded a landing in Pakistan. One way or another, the bandits made a very bad choice, since the death penalty is threatened for hijacking an aircraft in this country.
As soon as the plane entered Pakistani airspace, two interceptor fighters flew towards it. The crew had a hard time convincing the interceptors that they were a civilian vessel hijacked by terrorists.
The bandits demanded to land the plane in Karachi. However, already on the approach to the airfield, the controller forbade the landing. For over an hour, the Soviet airliner circled over the Pakistani airfield until it ran out of fuel. Only after that, the pilots were able to convince the controllers to give them permission and went to land.
From an air prison to hell on earth
Officials met the hijacked airliner at the airport. The reception was cordial. Everyone smiled, shook hands, hugged. The terrorists were separated from the hostages and very politely escorted to the airport. On the way, they even took a group photo of all the invaders. Probably, they even thought that they made the right choice, having flown to Pakistan, and now they will live here for their pleasure.
But as soon as the Pakistanis were sure that they had all the air terrorists in their hands and that they no longer had their weapons, they locked them up in the local police station. All prisoners were immediately put on shackles, which they did not remove again until their release.
They were also told that they are accused of hijacking and air terrorism, which are punishable by death under Pakistani law. The same evening, a Soviet plane with hostage passengers returned to the USSR. They spent more than a day in captivity with the bandits.
But for the Soviet air pirates, everything was just beginning. Initially they were sentenced to death, but later, as foreigners, they decided to take pity on them and replace the sentence with life imprisonment. And then they completely lowered the terms to more than 20 years, which gave a chance to be released.
But before that it was still necessary to live. The unlucky terrorists punished themselves in a way that they could not be punished in the USSR. Of course, Soviet prisons were far from ideal, but compared to Pakistani prisons, they were practically sanatoriums. At first, the criminals even feared that they would be extradited to the USSR. But after a few months they wanted this more than anything else.
The Soviet hijackers were housed in several different prisons in the south of the country, where there were the most difficult climatic conditions. In some periods the air temperature in the stuffy prison cells rose to 55-60 degrees. There was very little water. The food was poor, and there was no outside help, unlike in the USSR, where prisoners could receive parcels from their relatives. The shackles were not removed throughout the entire term of imprisonment.
The customs in local prisons were very simple: if the guards did not like something, they simply beat the prisoners with sticks. Since none of the Soviet prisoners knew the local language and could not even ask for water, attention had to be drawn to oneself with shouts and knocking on the doors, which led to a portion of sticks. However, these brutal measures of education forced all prisoners in the shortest possible time to master the local language - Urdu.
It is not surprising that after a few months in Pakistani prisons, two fugitives from Soviet justice took their own lives, and the third died either from heatstroke or from a heart attack. And the rest began to bombard Soviet departments with letters. They say, they understood everything and repented, return home, we want to sit there.
Even before the collapse of the country, Soviet representatives appealed to Pakistan with a request to extradite the criminals to their homeland. But relations between the USSR and Pakistan at that time were far from the best due to the recent Afghan war, so the Pakistani side flatly refused.
In 1992, the new Russian authorities also attempted extradition, but also unsuccessfully. And then such political and economic processes began in the country that they simply forgot about the Soviet hijackers.
Homecoming
Nevertheless, the Soviet pirates did not have to serve their time until the end. True, their fate was influenced by a random factor, and not by numerous petitions and appeals. In 1998, Pakistan celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence. On this occasion, a broad amnesty was announced, which included all foreigners in Pakistani prisons.
After eight years in prison, the hijackers of the Soviet plane were released. By this time, their ranks had thinned out. Three of them did not live to see liberation. Another severely undermined his health in difficult conditions of local prisons and suffered a heart attack. In addition, the fugitives had nowhere to go, they did not even have the money to return home.
Six of them were lucky, they were taken to Russia. There they were threatened with a new term, but even that was a mere trifle in comparison with Pakistani prisons. Two natives of Ukraine remained in Pakistan, because their new homeland did not want to return them or did not find money. Their further fate is not known.
As for the Russian bandits, they were escorted to the Russian Federation. There they were to appear again before the court. It was originally planned that they would be convicted of hijacking an aircraft. For this crime, under Russian law, they could receive up to 15 years in prison.
However, later it was decided not to try criminals twice for the same crime. Russian law enforcement officers considered that the time spent in Pakistani prisons should serve them as sufficient punishment. But their previous crimes, responsibility for which they wanted to avoid by hijacking the plane, has not been canceled. Therefore, all those who returned were convicted in old cases and received sentences depending on the severity of the crimes.
Evgeniy Antonyuk