The trucks slipped into the Beirut suburbs, TWA Flight 847 slipped into the early-morning light, and Robert Stethem’s life slipped into memoriam. Imad Mugniyah, who’d been instrumental in the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks not even two miles away, ordered the seven passengers who’d been identified by their IDs as members of the American military to be rushed out the back of the plane into trucks along with four more who had Jewish-sounding names. A dozen men got on the plane, but of the twelve bearded boarders only one really bears mentioning.
This was enough to convince Lebanese authorities to allow the reinforcements to board the idling Boeing 727. Moaning from the agony caused by his shattered ribcage being dragged across the floor to an open door on the aircraft, Stethem was shot in the back of his head and tossed unto the tarmac waiting below. To prove that they were serious about getting their reinforcements, one of the terrorists pulled Stethem from his seat near the front of the airplane. At this point the terrorists demanded that reinforcements be allowed to board the plane, but Lebanese officials balked.
Earlier during a refueling stop his hands were bound with bungee cords and he was dragged from the airplane for a beating severe enough to break every one of his ribs, a successful attempt to persuade the authorities to refuel the terrorist-controlled plane.Īfter Stethem’s beating the authorities caved, allowed the plane to be refueled, and it proceeded to skip around the Middle East and North Africa before finally coasting to a stop around two in the morning on one of Beirut International Airport’s runways. Stethem was already in bad shape when Flight 847 landed in Beirut. Stethem, a diver in the United States Navy, had been a passenger on the Boeing 727 when it was hijacked en route from Athens to Rome by two terrorists tied to various factions within Lebanon. Robert Stethem’s body slapped against the pebbled macadam of Beirut’s International Airport as the engines of TWA Flight 847 were brought to a whirring stop by the dark Mediterranean air.