Algiers-Paris flight, relive behind the scenes of the emblematic GIGN assault

11:30 a.m. A gateway is blocked. Negotiations begin. Anxious to shed light on Islam and the situation in Algeria, the pirates demand to receive an Algerian journalist and one of his French colleagues. Then, they order to fly to Paris where they wish to hold, again, a press conference. The captain is constantly leaving Algiers, because he knows that the inexpiable struggle between the GIA and the Algerian government will leave little room for dialogue.

During the talks, the commando also demanded the release of the two historic leaders of the Islamic Salvation Front, Abassi Madani and Ali Belhadj, imprisoned in Algeria for endangering state security. The Islamists are once again demanding authorization for a takeoff to Paris, with the intention of carrying out a kamikaze operation there. During the hostage situation, they called each other by the code names “Mobile 2”, “Mobile 3”, “Mobile 4” and “Mobile 6” thus making people believe in the existence of half a dozen pirates. .

12 hours. The National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN) is on alert. Half of the workforce, on leave this Christmas Eve, is urgently recalled.

2 p.m. Faced with the refusal of the Algerian authorities to cooperate, the terrorists liquidated a first hostage and threw his body onto the footbridge. He is an Algerian police commissioner who made the mistake of asserting his quality and asking for explanations. “He tortured his brothers,” lets go of the commando killer to justify his assassination.

For elite French gendarmes, air piracy is the worst case scenario: “A plane is like a tube through which it is difficult to distinguish passengers from hostage-takers, sums up Denis Favier, former director general of the gendarmerie who led the GIGN to the attack, in an interview given on May 22, 2004 to Le Figaro. It's a closed universe, full of kerosene. From the outset, we envisage the disaster scenario, something which would have prefigured that of September 11, 2001…”. At Satory, the GIGN digs out detailed plans for the Airbus from its databases, while negotiators work on the GIA's latest demands.

17h30. After a crisis meeting at the Quai d'Orsay with Dominique de Villepin, then chief of staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Alain Juppé, Denis Favier received the order to “project” his men onto Majorca. The island is halfway between Algeria and France. The elite unit, transported there in a “Sister Ship”, in every way similar to the hijacked Airbus, will remain stuck on the tarmac at Palma airport for 17 hours before taking off again towards the metropolis.

The GIGN command post, immediately set up near the tracks, updates, minute by minute, its files on the weaknesses, morphology and weapons of the terrorists, using information provided by the freed hostages.