Word: terrorizer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last week, however, terrorism suffered a dramatic setback. The West German government refused to bow to the demands of a pistol-armed band of two men and two women who had skyjacked a Lufthansa jet and embarked on a 110-hour odyssey of terror from Majorca to Mogadishu, Somalia. There, in a daring middle-of-the-night raid, West German commandos rescued 82 passengers and four crew members, killed three of the skyjackers and wounded the fourth (see following story...
...windows. Top-level businessmen constantly vary their daily schedules (making it difficult for terrorists to set traps for them) and are accompanied everywhere by bodyguards. (That did not help Schleyer. His three bodyguards were killed when he was captured.) Even those who are not likely to be targets of terror are affected. Observed a Dortmund barber: "They're going to hit again?somewhere. It's so terrible not to know where and when...
Although the roots of terrorism reach back to ancient times, violence for political ends was not systematically used until the middle of the last century. Then it became a favorite weapon of radical nationalists; the Irish used terror against the English, and the Armenians and Macedonians against the Turks. Perhaps the most notorious and brazen of the 19th century's terrorists were Russia's Narodnaya Volya, ruthless bands of nihilists who lobbed bombs at the Czar's officials...
Anarchists killed U.S. President William McKinley, not to mention a host of European royalty. Even seemingly contemporary techniques of terror have been tested by time. Rebellious Bedouins seized French planes in the 1920s. The first in-flight skyjacking took place in 1931, when a plane was commandeered by antiregime forces during a coup in Peru...
...roof, the paint on the cell bars chipping away to expose the constraining iron underneath, the echoing cacophony of voices rebounding against the unadorned walls of the block. The mere sights and sounds of the prison would be sufficient to inject a generous dose of raw terror into even the most jaded newcomers. The foregoing, needless to say, has only served as a fitting warm-up for the assorted misfits and ne'er-do-wells who populate the inside world of those paying back the proverbial debt to society...