How was the fate of the terrorists who made the first successful hijacking of an airplane in the USSR

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Half a century ago, in October 1970, in Batumi, passengers calmly went to board flight number 244, expecting to go down the ladder in Sukhumi or, a little later, in Krasnodar after half an hour. But during the flight, a real bloody drama broke out on board, a young stewardess died, almost all crew members were seriously injured. Pranas and Algirdas Brazinskas, 46 and 15 years old, respectively, committed the first plane hijacking in the Soviet Union.

Tragedy on board

At that time, passengers on Aeroflot's domestic lines did not have to go through a complicated procedure of checks and inspections before the flight, and the frames of metal detectors at airports had not yet been installed. That is why the terrorists were able to safely board Flight 244 with weapons and even a hand grenade.

Only 10 minutes have passed since the start of the flight, when two passengers, father and son, threatening the flight attendant with weapons, ordered her to give the crew a note demanding to change course and go to Turkey. 19-year-old flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko, rushing to the cockpit, tried to warn the crew about the threat, but was immediately shot. Later, Pranas will say in an interview with one of the publications that he killed the stewardess, "because she got in his way."

After the shooting of the flight attendant, the terrorists opened fire indiscriminately, seriously wounded all crew members, except for the co-pilot, and managed to land in Trabzon, Turkey. Brazinskas Sr. kept the crew at gunpoint, and his son Algirdas controlled the passengers with weapons in hand.

By this time, Brazinskas Sr. had many merits, including serving the Germans during the war and helping the “forest brothers” with weapons. After the war, he earned himself a year of correctional labor for abuse of office, then another five years in prison for embezzlement. Freed under the amnesty, Pranas remained in Uzbekistan, where he traded, for the most part, by speculation. The reason for the escape was the KGB's interest in Pranas Brazinskas.

Fight for terrorists

After the landing of the An-24, the father and son were immediately arrested. The Turkish authorities offered passengers and crew members to stay in Turkey, but all, as one, refused. Passengers were able to return home immediately, and the injured crew members received medical attention. The authorities later sent the flight attendant's body home on a separate flight, then handed over the plane and allowed the crew to return home.

The demand of the Soviet authorities to hand over the Brazinskas to them remained unsatisfied. At the same time, US diplomats took an active part in the "fight for Soviet terrorists", and senators and members of the United States House of Representatives were involved in the negotiations, which in itself was beyond the norm.

Pranas appeared in this whole story not as a banal criminal, but as a participant in the Lithuanian resistance, a fighter against Soviet power. In his words, 19-year-old Nadezhda Kurchenko was not just a flight attendant, but an experienced KGB agent, which is why the Brazinskas were forced to open fire. And in general, according to the air terrorists, there was a shootout with representatives of the KGB on board the plane.

As a result, the Turkish authorities decided to try the Soviet terrorists on their own, and the sentence passed on them was excessively lenient: Brazinskas Sr. received only 8 years in prison, and his son - 2 years. Four years later, the senior terrorist was released under an amnesty and ordered to be under house arrest.

Delayed reckoning

Attempts to obtain political asylum in the United States were initially unsuccessful, but the Brazinskas were determined to get what they wanted. After being refused by the embassy, they went through Venezuela to Canada, but did not reach the point of arrival, using a stop in New York to stay in the United States. It was later revealed that their illegal landing in the United States was in fact a carefully planned operation.

The Migration Service, at the request of the Lithuanian diaspora, who saw members of the liberation movement in Brazinskas, granted the father and son the right to live with the United States. Since then, Pranas and Algirdas Brazinskas lived under the name White, the father called himself Frank, and the son - Albert Victor. They settled in Santa Monica, California, where the largest Lithuanian community is known.

This condescension of the United States towards terrorists was explained quite simply. According to a State Department spokesman, the case with Pranas and Algirdas was special. Apparently, these two were not considered terrorists by the American authorities. And in 1982, the State Department went on to openly deceive, claiming that the Brazinskas were denied political asylum, and both of them were expelled from the country. True, the address of their "expulsion" was not made public, despite the requests of the Soviet authorities.

In fact, the Brazinskas lived quietly in California, authored a book in which they presented the hijacking of an airplane as one of the stages of the struggle for the liberation of Lithuania from Soviet power. The younger Brazinskas became an accountant, and then married Virginia White, an employee of the US State Department and a former citizen of Lithuania. The elder Brazinskas could not master the English language, and his behavior became more and more aggressive every year.

According to the recollections of his neighbors, Pranas traded in arms for some time and often behaved aggressively, he fancied a KGB agent in every passer-by. One of Brazinskas' neighbors asked the police to protect her from physical threats from Frank White.

Both Brazinskas were openly feared in the Lithuanian community, not knowing what to expect from them. Over time, the Brazinskas were forgotten. But in 2002, the press recalled them again due to the fact that Algirdas killed his elderly father during a quarrel, hitting him several times on the head with either dumbbells or a bat. As Algirdas later explained, Pranas saw in his son another KGB agent who had come to deal with him, and was determined to use weapons against him.

If earlier he pointed a pistol at passers-by, accompanying them to the police, like Soviet spies, this time Brazinskas Sr. decided to deal with his own son. Algirdas, in response to the threat, dealt with his father. After the incident, he called the police only a day later. Algirdas Brazinskas was sentenced to 16 years in prison. In 2018, he was supposed to be released, but there is no information about his fate after his release.

According to publicly available information, in the history of the USSR there have been more than a hundred hijackings of aircraft, some of which have a happy ending. But there are also known particularly audacious, desperate, cruel crimes that culminated in the deaths of innocents and the sacrifice of the crews. Although some motives can be called noble in one way or another, disasters often occurred during their performance.