15 Hijacking Attempts Foiled in 34 Years

Security teams and sky marshals have been able to thwart 15 hijacking attempts on Iranian planes in the past 34 years, a senior security official said on Saturday. “We had 15 cases of hijacking since 1984,” commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps’s Flight Guards Division (sky marshals), Brigadier General Ali Nassiri said, Mehr News Agency reported. “In 11 cases, the attempts were foiled and the rest were thwarted without the need for physical measures,” he said, adding “there were two successful highjack attempts which had not been under protection of the division; one was carried out on a plane belonging to Saha Airlines in 1995 and the other on a Falcon jet.” Nassiri maintained that the IRGC is responsible for the protection of the heads of the three branches of government, their deputies, ministers, and heads of state and governments visiting Iran. IRGC is also in charge of protecting sensitive sites. “Last year, we lost four guards in Syria, and one guard who was killed during a terrorist attack on the parliament on  June 7, 2017,” he said.