Dennis Amachree, a retired assistant director of the Department of State Services (DSS), has recounted how Nigeria’s secret police assisted the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the arrest of plane hijacker Omar Rezaq in Lagos.
Amachree narrated the operation in ‘DSS @40: My Journey
Behind the Shield’, a memoir chronicling his four decades in Nigeria’s
intelligence service.
Rezaq, a Lebanese-born militant, was one of three hijackers
who seized EgyptAir Flight 648 in 1985.
According to Amachree, in July 1993, he received a call from
Peter Nwaoduah, then director-general of the State Security Service (SSS),
instructing him to prepare for “an imminent visit from a United States Embassy
security team”.
Nwaoduah directed him to cooperate fully with the team but
provided no further details about what Amachree described as a “high-stakes”
mission.
“Less than an hour later, a contingent of FBI special agents
arrived at my office. They confirmed that the Director General had briefed
them, and we immediately pivoted to the operational task at hand,” Amachree
wrote.
Amachree said the FBI informed him that their target was
Rezaq, who was travelling from Accra, Ghana, to Nigeria on a Ghana Airways
flight bound for the Muritala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) in Lagos.
“The objective was to secure his arrest with absolute
discretion. Given the subject’s history of extreme violence, the agents
emphasised that the operation required the highest level of professional
precision,” he said.
He said he assigned one of his officers to escort the FBI
team to the boarding bridge, where they could monitor the aircraft’s arrival on
the tarmac.
“Simultaneously, I reached out to my friend, the military
Airport Commandant, John Ojikutu. After I briefed him on the sensitive nature
of the operation, he acted with impressive speed, mobilising a unit of armed
airmen to establish a secure perimeter around the arrival zone, ensuring we
were prepared for any potential hostile reaction,” he added.
Amachree detailed that he also directed a privately
chartered FBI Gulfstream IV aircraft to a strategic position to facilitate a
swift departure after Rezaq’s arrest.
When the Ghana Airways flight landed, Amachree said he
intercepted the suspect and completed the handover to the FBI agents, who
immediately departed Nigeria with Rezaq aboard the chartered aircraft.
According to Amachree, “the entire ground operation,
executed with surgical efficiency, took exactly 15 minutes”.
Rezaq was convicted in the US in 1996 on charges that
included air piracy and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Amachree said the successful operation earned him a formal
plaque of commendation from then US President Bill Clinton.
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