United States v. Tiede

LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 hijacking

The hijacked Tu-134 at Tempelhof on 30 August 1978
Hijacking summary
Date	30 August 1978
Summary	Hijacking
Site	Hijacker forced the aircraft to land at U.S. Air Force base at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin
Passengers	62
Crew	7
Fatalities	0
Injuries (non-fatal)	0
Survivors	69
Aircraft type	Tupolev Tu-134
Operator	LOT Polish Airlines
Flight origin	Gdańsk Airport
Destination	Schönefeld Airport

LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 hijacking was the hijacking of a LOT Polish Airlines that occurred on 30 August 1978. The hijackers from East Germany (GDR / DDR) were seeking political asylum in West Germany (FRG / BRD). The plane landed safely, and the primary hijacker was tried and convicted by a German jury in the specially convened United States Court for Berlin and sentenced to time served, the nine months he had already served during pretrial detention.

The GDR citizens Hans Detlef Alexander Tiede (aka Detlev Tiede) and his friend Ingrid Ruske and her 12-year-old daughter had travelled to Poland to meet there with Ruske's West German boyfriend Horst Fischer, who planned to bring false West German papers to enable their escape by ferry to West German Travemünde. However, Fischer did not appear, and after four days of waiting for him Ruske and Tiede – not having any information – concluded, that Fischer must have been arrested when travelling through East Germany. Their conclusion was right, Fischer had indeed been arrested and later sentenced to eight years of jail in East Germany for preparing their Republikflucht (escape from GDR), outlawed as a crime by East German legislation. After two years Fischer was released after the West German federal government had paid a ransom to East Germany. Ruske and Fischer married after his release in West Germany.

Ruske and Tiede then concluded that they were trapped, with arrest awaiting them when returning to East Germany. So they developed the plan to hijack a plane, flying to East Berlin's Schönefeld Airport, to the U.S. Air Force base at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin. They bought a toy starting pistol in a Polish fleamarket, and then booked three tickets on LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 from Gdańsk, Poland, to East Berlin.