Patrick Argüello
Encyclopedia
Patricio José Argüello Ryan (March 1943 – September 1970), known as Patrick Argüello, was a Nicaraguan American
who was shot and killed while attempting to hijack El Al
Flight 219 in September 1970 as part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
's Dawson's Field hijackings
.
, La Paz
Centro, and Managua
. In 1956, Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García
was assassinated. His surviving sons Luis and Anastasio
launched nationwide reprisals. Argüello's family were part of a general exodus of Nicaraguans fleeing the repression. They left for Los Angeles
.
In Los Angeles, Argüello attended Belmont Senior High School. As he grew older, he became increasingly resentful of the Somoza regime. He had seen many of his friends in the student movement beaten, arrested, and killed. Like many youths of the 1960s, he was fascinated by the Cuban Revolution
and the figure of Che Guevara
.
in 1967. This was during the time of political ferment that would culminate in the 1970 election of Socialist President Salvador Allende
; Argüello was deeply affected by the deaths in August 1967 of several Nicaraguan friends who were members of the Sandinista guerrilla movement of Pancasan, as well as the death of Che Guevara
in Bolivia
two months later.
When he returned to Nicaragua
, he attempted to collaborate with the Sandinista National Liberation Front
. However, Sandinista leader Carlos Fonseca
distrusted Argüello's American background, suspected him of being an infiltrator, and had his participation limited. Argüello was exiled by the Somoza government in August 1969 for his anti-regime activities. He went to Geneva, Switzerland to work with other exiled Nicaraguans.
In early 1970, Sandinista leader Oscar Turcios made contact with the Marxist Fourth International in Western Europe, in the hopes of meeting other guerrilla groups who could offer needed military training to the Sandinista's fledgling movement. The Sandinistas first made contact with Nayef Hawatmeh
's Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP). Argüello and several other Sandinistas were sent to PDFLP camps near Amman, Jordan to receive guerrilla training from April to June 1970. Two other Nicaraguans who trained with Argüello were Juan Jose Quezada (killed in Nicaragua in 1973) and Pedro Arauz Palacios (killed in Nicaragua in 1977).
In Leila Khaled
's memoirs, it is alleged that Argüello fathered three children. However, in Mr. Yurow's biographical study of Patrick Argüello, he has found no evidence to substantiate this claim.
In the summer of 1970, Argüello and a small group of Nicaraguan Sandinista émigrés made contact with a different faction of the Palestinian guerrilla movement, George Habbash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
. The Nicaraguans wanted additional guerrilla training. The price the PFLP asked for the promised training was Nicaraguan participation in the simultaneous hijackings of four European airliners in a bid to draw attention to the Palestinian issue.
at Amsterdam
on September 6, 1970, Argüello was left with only Leila Khaled
, whom he had met only a week before and knew as Shadiah, to help him hijack the plane. Posing as a married couple, they boarded the plane using Honduran
passport
s—having passed through a security check of their luggage—seated in the second row of tourist-class. Just before they began their hijacking, Khaled told Argüello her actual identity, which impressed him. Thirty minutes into the flight, they drew their guns and approached the cockpit, demanding entrance.
The well-dressed Argüello reportedly threw his sole grenade down the airliner aisle, but it failed to explode, and he was hit over the head with a bottle of whiskey by a passenger after he drew his pistol. As the pilot threw the plane into a nosedive, throwing the hijackers off balance,, Arguello fired his gun 3–5 times, wounding steward Shlomo Vider.
Khaled had no better luck; unable to reach her own grenades concealed within her brassiere
, she was beaten by the security and passengers, while the plane made an emergency landing at Heathrow Airport.
Here the story diverges, as the Israel
is claim that Argüello was shot four times during this struggle and Khaled to date testifies that it was after they were beaten and bound that Israeli security fired four shots into his back. Either way, Argüello was dead by the time he and Khaled were in the ambulance en route to Hillingdon Hospital
, after pilot Uri Bar-Lev refused orders to return to Israel due to his concern for the wounded steward.
and PFLP attacked Lod Airport
in Tel Aviv
, the letter claiming responsibility for what it dubbed Operation Dir Yassin
claimed that the attack had been carried by Squad of the Martyr Patrick Argüello – who had died two years earlier in the failed hijacking.
In the late 1970s, a small book publisher in San Francisco named itself the Patrick Argüello Press / People's Information Relay. It was noted chiefly for publishing a "Minimanual Of The Urban Guerrilla
" and "Red Army Faction". After its editors were arrested on unrelated charges, the company was dissolved.
In 1983, after the Nicaraguan revolution, the Sandinistas commemorated Argüello by renaming the geothermal plant at Momotombo
in his honour. However, after the September 11, 2001 attacks
, the Nicaraguan government of Arnoldo Alemán
removed the name of the plant, claiming it was wrong to honour a terrorist.
The 1990s musical group Baader Meinhof wrote a song entitled "Kill Ramirez", which included the verse, "Patrick Argüello, Leila Khaled/disappeared into the tail end of the plane/said he's not one/of the brothers/good days bad days/they're all the same/Kill Ramirez el pirata".
Ghassan Kanafani
later spoke of Argüello, saying "The martyr Patrick Argüello is a symbol for a just cause and the struggle to achieve it, a struggle without limits. He is a symbol for the oppressed and deprived masses, represented by Oum Saad and many others coming from the camps and from all parts of Lebanon, who marched in his funeral procession."
Nicaraguan American
Nicaraguan American are Americans of Nicaraguan ancestry who were born in or have immigrated to the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 177,684 Americans of full or partial Nicaraguan ancestry living in the U.S...
who was shot and killed while attempting to hijack El Al
El Al
El Al Israel Airlines Ltd , trading as El Al , is the flag carrier of Israel. It operates scheduled domestic and international services and cargo flights to Europe, North America, Africa and the Far East from its main base in Ben Gurion International Airport...
Flight 219 in September 1970 as part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a Palestinian Marxist-Leninist organisation founded in 1967. It has consistently been the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization , the largest being Fatah...
's Dawson's Field hijackings
Dawson's Field hijackings
In the Dawson's Field hijackings five jet aircraft bound for New York City were hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine...
.
Youth
Argüello was born in San Francisco, California in March 1943, the son of Rodolfo Arguello Ruiz, a Nicaraguan national, and the former Catalina (Kathleen) Ryan, a US citizen. His family moved back to Nicaragua when he was 3, and lived in MomotomboMomotombo
Momotombo is a stratovolcano in Nicaragua, not far from the city of León. It stands on the shores of Lago de Managua. An eruption of the volcano in 1610 forced inhabitants of the Spanish city of León to relocate about 30 miles west...
, La Paz
La Paz
Nuestra Señora de La Paz is the administrative capital of Bolivia, as well as the departmental capital of the La Paz Department, and the second largest city in the country after Santa Cruz de la Sierra...
Centro, and Managua
Managua
Managua is the capital city of Nicaragua as well as the department and municipality by the same name. It is the largest city in Nicaragua in terms of population and geographic size. Located on the southwestern shore of Lake Xolotlán or Lake Managua, the city was declared the national capital in...
. In 1956, Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García
Anastasio Somoza García
Anastasio Somoza García was officially the President of Nicaragua from 1 January 1937 to 1 May 1947 and from 21 May 1950 to 29 September 1956, but ruled effectively as dictator from 1936 until his assassination.-Biography:Somoza was born in San Marcos, Carazo Department in Nicaragua, the son of...
was assassinated. His surviving sons Luis and Anastasio
Anastasio Somoza Debayle
Anastasio Somoza Debayle was a Nicaraguan leader and officially the 73rd and 76th President of Nicaragua from 1 May 1967 to 1 May 1972 and from 1 December 1974 to 17 July 1979. As head of the National Guard, he was de facto ruler of the country from 1967 to 1979...
launched nationwide reprisals. Argüello's family were part of a general exodus of Nicaraguans fleeing the repression. They left for Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
.
In Los Angeles, Argüello attended Belmont Senior High School. As he grew older, he became increasingly resentful of the Somoza regime. He had seen many of his friends in the student movement beaten, arrested, and killed. Like many youths of the 1960s, he was fascinated by the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
and the figure of Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
.
Adulthood
A graduate of UCLA, Argüello received a Fulbright scholarship to study medicine in ChileChile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
in 1967. This was during the time of political ferment that would culminate in the 1970 election of Socialist President Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
; Argüello was deeply affected by the deaths in August 1967 of several Nicaraguan friends who were members of the Sandinista guerrilla movement of Pancasan, as well as the death of Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
in Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
two months later.
When he returned to Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
, he attempted to collaborate with the Sandinista National Liberation Front
Sandinista National Liberation Front
The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas in both English and Spanish...
. However, Sandinista leader Carlos Fonseca
Carlos Fonseca
For the Brazilian boxer with the same name see Carlos Fonseca .Carlos Fonseca Amador was a Nicaraguan teacher and librarian who founded the Sandinista National Liberation Front...
distrusted Argüello's American background, suspected him of being an infiltrator, and had his participation limited. Argüello was exiled by the Somoza government in August 1969 for his anti-regime activities. He went to Geneva, Switzerland to work with other exiled Nicaraguans.
In early 1970, Sandinista leader Oscar Turcios made contact with the Marxist Fourth International in Western Europe, in the hopes of meeting other guerrilla groups who could offer needed military training to the Sandinista's fledgling movement. The Sandinistas first made contact with Nayef Hawatmeh
Nayef Hawatmeh
Nayef Hawatmeh , Jordanian-Palestinian Christian politician. His name can be transliterated from the Arabic in many ways; variants include Naif Hawatma, Niaf Hawathme, etc....
's Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP). Argüello and several other Sandinistas were sent to PDFLP camps near Amman, Jordan to receive guerrilla training from April to June 1970. Two other Nicaraguans who trained with Argüello were Juan Jose Quezada (killed in Nicaragua in 1973) and Pedro Arauz Palacios (killed in Nicaragua in 1977).
In Leila Khaled
Leila Khaled
Leila Khaled is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine . She is currently a member of the Palestinian National Council...
's memoirs, it is alleged that Argüello fathered three children. However, in Mr. Yurow's biographical study of Patrick Argüello, he has found no evidence to substantiate this claim.
In the summer of 1970, Argüello and a small group of Nicaraguan Sandinista émigrés made contact with a different faction of the Palestinian guerrilla movement, George Habbash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a Palestinian Marxist-Leninist organisation founded in 1967. It has consistently been the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization , the largest being Fatah...
. The Nicaraguans wanted additional guerrilla training. The price the PFLP asked for the promised training was Nicaraguan participation in the simultaneous hijackings of four European airliners in a bid to draw attention to the Palestinian issue.
Hijacking
When two of their Palestinian conspirators were unable to board the Boeing 707Boeing 707
The Boeing 707 is a four-engine narrow-body commercial passenger jet airliner developed by Boeing in the early 1950s. Its name is most commonly pronounced as "Seven Oh Seven". The first airline to operate the 707 was Pan American World Airways, inaugurating the type's first commercial flight on...
at Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
on September 6, 1970, Argüello was left with only Leila Khaled
Leila Khaled
Leila Khaled is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine . She is currently a member of the Palestinian National Council...
, whom he had met only a week before and knew as Shadiah, to help him hijack the plane. Posing as a married couple, they boarded the plane using Honduran
Honduras
Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...
passport
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....
s—having passed through a security check of their luggage—seated in the second row of tourist-class. Just before they began their hijacking, Khaled told Argüello her actual identity, which impressed him. Thirty minutes into the flight, they drew their guns and approached the cockpit, demanding entrance.
The well-dressed Argüello reportedly threw his sole grenade down the airliner aisle, but it failed to explode, and he was hit over the head with a bottle of whiskey by a passenger after he drew his pistol. As the pilot threw the plane into a nosedive, throwing the hijackers off balance,, Arguello fired his gun 3–5 times, wounding steward Shlomo Vider.
Khaled had no better luck; unable to reach her own grenades concealed within her brassiere
Brassiere
A brassiere is an undergarment that covers, supports, and elevates the breasts. Since the late 19th century, it has replaced the corset as the most widely accepted method for supporting breasts....
, she was beaten by the security and passengers, while the plane made an emergency landing at Heathrow Airport.
Here the story diverges, as the Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
is claim that Argüello was shot four times during this struggle and Khaled to date testifies that it was after they were beaten and bound that Israeli security fired four shots into his back. Either way, Argüello was dead by the time he and Khaled were in the ambulance en route to Hillingdon Hospital
Hillingdon Hospital
Hillingdon Hospital is an NHS hospital, located in Pield Heath Road, Hillingdon, Greater London. It is a general hospital serving the local area, providing a wide variety of services including Accident and Emergency , In-patients, Day Surgery and Outpatient Clinics...
, after pilot Uri Bar-Lev refused orders to return to Israel due to his concern for the wounded steward.
Legacy
In 1972, when the Japanese Red ArmyJapanese Red Army
The was a Communist terrorist group founded by Fusako Shigenobu early in 1971 in Lebanon. It sometimes called itself Arab-JRA after the Lod airport massacre...
and PFLP attacked Lod Airport
Ben Gurion International Airport
Ben Gurion International Airport , also referred to by its Hebrew acronym Natbag , is the largest and busiest international airport in Israel, handling 12,160,339 passengers in 2010...
in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
, the letter claiming responsibility for what it dubbed Operation Dir Yassin
Lod Airport massacre
The Lod Airport massacre was a terrorist attack that occurred on May 30, 1972, in which three members of the Japanese Red Army, on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine , killed 26 people and injured 80 others at Tel Aviv's Lod airport...
claimed that the attack had been carried by Squad of the Martyr Patrick Argüello – who had died two years earlier in the failed hijacking.
In the late 1970s, a small book publisher in San Francisco named itself the Patrick Argüello Press / People's Information Relay. It was noted chiefly for publishing a "Minimanual Of The Urban Guerrilla
Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla
Minimanual Of The Urban Guerrilla is a book written by Brazilian guerrilla fighter Carlos Marighella in June 1969. It consists of advices on how to disrupt and overthrow an authoritarian regime aiming a revolution...
" and "Red Army Faction". After its editors were arrested on unrelated charges, the company was dissolved.
In 1983, after the Nicaraguan revolution, the Sandinistas commemorated Argüello by renaming the geothermal plant at Momotombo
Momotombo
Momotombo is a stratovolcano in Nicaragua, not far from the city of León. It stands on the shores of Lago de Managua. An eruption of the volcano in 1610 forced inhabitants of the Spanish city of León to relocate about 30 miles west...
in his honour. However, after the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
, the Nicaraguan government of Arnoldo Alemán
Arnoldo Alemán
José Arnoldo Alemán Lacayo was the 81st President of Nicaragua from 10 January 1997 to 10 January 2002.-Biography:Alemán was born in Managua and received his early education at the La Salle institute in Managua...
removed the name of the plant, claiming it was wrong to honour a terrorist.
The 1990s musical group Baader Meinhof wrote a song entitled "Kill Ramirez", which included the verse, "Patrick Argüello, Leila Khaled/disappeared into the tail end of the plane/said he's not one/of the brothers/good days bad days/they're all the same/Kill Ramirez el pirata".
Quotes
Leila Khaled spoke often of Argüello after the hijacking, stating that "Our rendezvous with history was approaching: all plans had to be translated into action; history was ours to write; Patrick Argüello was to write it in blood, I was not so honoured."Ghassan Kanafani
Ghassan Kanafani
Ghassan Kanafani was a Palestinian writer and a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was assassinated by car bomb in Beirut, allegedly by the Mossad.- Early years :Ghassan Fayiz Kanafani was born in 1936 in the then Acre , British Mandate of Palestine...
later spoke of Argüello, saying "The martyr Patrick Argüello is a symbol for a just cause and the struggle to achieve it, a struggle without limits. He is a symbol for the oppressed and deprived masses, represented by Oum Saad and many others coming from the camps and from all parts of Lebanon, who marched in his funeral procession."