Large box of documentation from the law-office of S.A. Szczupak & Co., Tel-Aviv relevant to the law-suit brought by the Entebbe hostages against Air France.

EXTRAORDINARY ARCHIVE RELATING TO THE HEROIC "RAID ON ENTEBBE." On June 27th, 1976, Air France Flight 139, en route from Tel-Aviv to Paris, stopped in Athens. There, four terrorists boarded the plane, two Germans of the German "Revolutionary Cells" (RZ) and two Arabs of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They commandeered the plane, forcing the pilot to make a detour to Bengazi, Libya, in order to refuel, and finally land in Entebbe, Uganda, then under the dictatorship of Idi Amin. In Entebbe, the terrorists freed a number of hostages retaining only those who were Jewish - some one hundred in number. The terrorists demanded the release of 53 imprisoned comrades and payment of a considerable sum. Should their terms not be met, they would execute the hostages. On the night of July 3rd, morning of July 4th, the hostages were rescued in a clandestine Israeli commando operation. Unfortunately, three passengers were killed in the crossfire. The one Israeli soldier killed, was the immensely gifted commander of the operation, Yonatan Netanyahu (brother of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu). All the hijackers were killed, as well as 45 Ugandan soldiers. While the story of the unprecedented rescue of the Jewish hostages from Entebbe International Airport on July 4th, 1976 is very broadly known, few are aware that in the aftermath, the hostages brought a law suit against Air France for alleged negligence that resulted in the breach of security on the scheduled Tel Aviv - Paris flight. Law suits were also entered against Singapore Airlines for having (unwittingly) transported the terrorists from Bahrain via Kuwait to Athens Airport, where they boarded the ill-fated Air France Flight 139. The passengers claimed that they were not told by representatives of Air France that the plane was scheduled to make a stop in Athens. Had they known, they would never had boarded in Tel-Aviv, for the laxity of security in Athens Airport was felt to be well known. The former hostages also contended that Air France had not conducted proper screening and searches of the passengers boarding in Athens. Several of the plaintiffs claimed that they suffered severely from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In this regard, we read the psychiatric opinion of Prof. Marcel Assael after examining Ilan Hartuv, son of Dora Bloch, the 75 year old woman who was dragged from her hospital bed in Kampala and murdered on orders of Idi Amin. Years later, her son himself, saved in the Entebbe rescue operation, was a mental wreck, unable to process that he survived, while his mother was left behind to be murdered. Air France's lawyers, attempted to impeach Prof. Assael's testimony by arguing that Hartuv had in fact shown signs of mental instability prior to Entebbe. Exceptional is a photocopy of a personal letter by Jane Williams Chaudley, wife of the British Consul in Kampala, to Ilan Hartuv, written four months after the rescue, in which she describes her visit to Dora Bloch in Mulago Hospital on the night of July 4th, immediately before her murder. Subsequently, Jane was tipped off by a Ugandan villager as to the whereabouts of the poor woman's corpse, but on July 13th, she and her husband were expelled from Uganda, before they had a chance to recover the body. Ultimately, the case was settled out of court. While disavowing any negligence or wrongdoing, Air France agreed to pay the hostages as a group the amount of $1,780,000 as a "humanitarian gesture." The Jerusalem Post of June 17th, 1981, summed up matters: "Israeli former hostages in the Entebbe hijacking and heirs of the four civilians killed have secretly reached a compensation agreement with Air France that settles all outstanding local claims against the airline. The out-of-court settlement was reached May 14th and calls for the global payment of a "seven figure U.S. dollars sum" to the 67 Israeli claimants, an informed source said. A clause in the out-of-court agreement stipulated it remain secret so as not to influence outstanding foreign claims against Air France, the source, who declined to be identified, told The Post."