NARRATIVE – On December 26, 1994, the gendarmes led a heroic assault to free the passengers of flight AF 8969, taken hostage by an Islamist commando. France has just escaped the first mass attack, seven years before September 11, 2001.
On this Saturday, December 24, 1994, France, which was preparing for Christmas Eve, capsized in the middle of a nightmare. Benefiting from police and airport negligence at Houari-Boumediène airport in Algiers, four armed Islamists boarded the Airbus A300 flying AF 8969 from Paris at 11:05 a.m., with 229 passengers and 12 members on board. crew. Abdul Abdallah Yahia, a former little thug who espoused the radical cause, is the presumed leader of the commando. Aged 25, he is assisted by Makhlouf Benguettaf, an Islamist who escaped from prison two years his senior. Their two accomplices, nicknamed “Lotfi” and “Maboul”, are nervous. Dressed in raincoats concealing stolen Air Algérie uniforms, the terrorists first pretend to be police officers and simulate an identity check. The captain, Bernard Dhellemme, did not immediately understand the anomaly of this unexpected “police operation”. «
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