Jet Hijacker Admits Killing Oceanside, Israeli Women

VALLETTA, Malta —  One of three Palestinians who hijacked an Egyptian airliner in 1985 admitted Tuesday that he killed two women passengers, including one from San Diego County.

Lebanese-born defendant Omar Mohammed Ali Rezaq, 25, pleaded guilty to seven of nine charges when his trial opened in a heavily guarded courtroom.

The state dropped the two remaining, lesser charges of firearms use and violation of Maltese airspace to speed the trial. Judge Wallace Gulia is expected to announce the verdict today.

Rezaq was one of three Palestinian gunmen who commandeered an Egyptair Boeing 737 flying the Athens-Cairo route Nov. 23, 1985.

Sixty people, including the two other Palestinian air pirates, died in the hijacking and the storming of the plane by Egyptian soldiers.

Rezaq pleaded guilty to killing Scarlett Marie Rogenkamp of Oceanside and Nitzan Mendelson, an Israeli woman. He had denied the charges in pretrial testimony.

The two women were forced to go to the doorway of the plane after Jewish and American passengers were singled out. The women were shot and thrown from the plane to the Tarmac.

Conviction on the murder and hijacking charges could mean life imprisonment, Malta’s stiffest criminal penalty, for Rezaq.

Rezaq, born in the Sabra refugee camp in Beirut, testified that the hijacking was “an act against Egypt’s political system, an act against Egypt’s policy which was destroying the future of the Palestinians.”

Rezaq said the hijackers had to land in Malta because the plane did not have enough fuel to go elsewhere.

“We came to Malta in transit,” he said while making a plea of mitigating circumstances. “What happened in Malta was an accident.”

Rezaq said the hijackers had intended to fly to an Arab country, which he declined to identify.

Asked why the hijackers had fired at Israelis, Rezaq said, “This is our principle.” He said they fired at Americans “because they are imperialists . . . and there are other reasons, too.”