The only hijacker to be brought to justice, Omar Mohammed Ali Rezaq, was a Palestinian refugee from Lebanon hell-bent on paying back Israel for murdering his people.

Scarlett Marie Rogenkamp, 38, knew her end had come when the hijacker approached and summoned her to the aircraft entrance.

With her hands tied behind her back she stood up from her seat and walked to the door resigned to her fate.

Omar Mohammed Ali Rezaq, 22, pointed the 0.38 calibre revolver to her head and fired. Ms Rogenkamp fell face down on the platform and then was pushed down the stairs onto the tarmac. She was dead.

According to the head of the forensic team, Anthony Abela Medici, the bullet lodged in her cranium.

“The fact she did not resist the execution made her a sitting duck even though Mr Rezaq’s revolver was defective,” Dr Abela Medici says.

Ms Rogenkamp was the hijacker’s fifth victim. Of the six Mr Rezaq would shoot at point blank range, four survived. Nitzan Mendelson, 23, an Israeli, was the other passenger killed by Mr Rezaq.

In court, the aircraft’s captain, Hani Galal, described the hijacker as a ruthless killer showing no remorse every time he shot a passenger.

Veteran journalist John Mizzi in his book Massacre in Malta writes that Mr Rezaq never gave any indication of his ultimate intentions. They will probably never be known. Mr Rezaq turned down a request by The Times to be interviewed from his prison cell in the United States.

But Dr Abela Medici believes the situation in Malta precipitated the way it did because Mr Rezaq took over the hijacking operation after the leader of the terrorists was killed mid-air during a shoot out with one of the Egyptian security guards aboard the plane.

Omar Mohammed Ali Rezaq (centre) accompanied by armed security guards and his lawyer Joseph Mifsud during an on-site inquiry in his trial.Omar Mohammed Ali Rezaq (centre) accompanied by armed security guards and his lawyer Joseph Mifsud during an on-site inquiry in his trial.

“The three hijackers only got to know each other just before boarding the plane at Athens airport. It was unclear where Mr Rezaq wanted to go and what he wanted to achieve and once he had killed a passenger on Maltese territory the government was never going to provide fuel and allow the plane to leave. Apart from this, the mid-air shooting had pierced the fuselage and this had to be repaired,” Dr Abela Medici says.

But the motivation behind a 22-year-old’s drive to commit such heinous crimes remains incomprehensible to ordinary people.

Former Special Mobile Unit head Charles Cassar says Mr Rezaq always contended his actions were a result of the massacre of Palestinians in the Lebanese refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982.

Lebanese Christian militia groups supported by Israel had entered the camps and massacred hundreds of Palestinians. Among those killed were Mr Rezaq’s next of kin.

“He always said the Israelis killed his family and wanted to pay them back. ‘This is the only way we can fight’, he once told me while I escorted him in the court house that was specially assembled at Fort St Elmo,” Mr Cassar recalls.

Without justifying Mr Rezaq’s actions, Mr Cassar says the hijacker’s upbringing as a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon may have conditioned his behaviour.

“I still ask myself though why did those innocent people have to die. Was it all because of this man’s whim? I have no adjectives to describe him,” he says.

Dr Abela Medici, who still retains a personal hand-written note in Arabic by Mr Rezaq, muses about justice and whether it was served in this case.

“Victims may feel that justice was served when Mr Rezaq was sentenced to life behind bars in the United States. However, for justice to be really done it has to also be done in his regard. Mr Rezaq’s family was killed brutally and nobody has taken responsibility for those massacres,” Dr Abela Medici says.

His words are not meant to justify the hijacker’s actions, which then led to the massacre at Luqa that resulted from a botched storming of the plane by Egyptian commandos.

“Irrespective of how justified the hijackers felt they were, they kidnapped and killed innocent civilians who had nothing to do with what happened at Sabra and Shatila. These people had a right to live,” Dr Abela Medici says, recalling the charred bodies of pregnant women and children as young as one.

Those haunting images remain stacked in a voluminous file detailing all aspects of the hijacking saga. As he goes through them Dr Abela Medici says he came to know Mr Rezaq during meetings at prison.

“He had a justification for what he did and I do not accept it. But if your purpose in life is removed, as Mr Rezaq’s was, all that was left for him was to become a terrorist,” Dr Abela Medici says, insisting only a just solution for the whole of the Middle East would help prevent fundamentalists from embarking on horrendous acts of terrorism.

Mr Rezaq was arraigned on December 12, 1985 and charged with the death of two passengers – Scarlett Marie Rogenkamp and Nitzan Mendelson – and the attempted murder of Jackie Nink Pflug, Tamar Artzi, Methad Mustafa Kamal, Mohammed Hoani Goumi, Mohammed Haddad Mahmoud, Sami Abdu Ibrahim, Ibrahim Abd Aziz Dahouk and Patrick Scott Baker.

Hijacking was not a crime listed in the statute books and so Mr Rezaq was also charged with the detention of crew and passengers against their will, making death threats and torturing various persons.

His trial started on November 2, 1988 at a specially-assembled court room at Fort St Elmo presided by Mr Justice Wallace Gulia. Mr Rezaq pleaded guilty and the judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison.

Five months later his sentence was confirmed on appeal.

However, Mr Rezaq only served seven years, having benefitted from various remissions. He was quietly released by the Maltese authorities and assumed a new identity in Ghana. The American authorities were miffed by the release and tracked down Mr Rezaq, finally arresting him upon arrival in Nigeria.

He was brought to justice in the US for hijack and killing and threatening American citizens.

Mr Rezaq is serving a life sentence.

Shot at point blank: Rezaq’s victims

• Scarlett Marie Rogenkamp, 38, US citizen – killed

• Nitzan Mendelson, 23, Israeli citizen – killed

• Tamar Artzi, 24, Israeli citizen – survived

• Patrick Scott Baker, 28, US citizen –survived

• Jackie Nink Pflug, 30, US citizen – survived

• Medhat Mustafa Kamal, 26, Egyptian security guard – survived

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.