November 9, 2005
A German law allowing the air force to shoot down hijacked planes could lead to an air disaster on the scale of Lockerbie, a pilot told the country's highest court on Wednesday.

Georg Fongern of the pilots' association Cockpit said it was impossible to be sure that a hijacker planned to use a plane as a weapon in a September 11-style attack until he declared such an intention or actually carried it out.

"It's easy to imagine that the state could bring about a Lockerbie," expert witness Fongern told the Constitutional Court, which must decide if the measure is lawful.

He was referring to the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed all 259 people on the plane and 11 more on the ground.

The German law allows the defence minister to order the shooting down of a hijacked plane, but has been challenged by critics who argue the state has no right to "sacrifice" apparently doomed passengers to try to save lives on the ground.

"For the first time, the state wants to assume the right to take the lives of fully law-abiding people in peacetime," said liberal politician Burkhard Hirsch, one of the plaintiffs. "The law infringes on inalienable constitutional rights."

Interior Minister Otto Schily, defending the law, said it was primarily designed to allow the shooting down of a light aircraft to thwart a potential terrorist attack.

Ministers drafted it in 2003 after a 31 year old pilot brought Frankfurt to a standstill by circling the city in a light aircraft and threatening to crash it into the European Central Bank tower. In July this year, a solo pilot crashed a light plane in front of Germany's parliament building in an apparent suicide.

Schily said a plane full of passengers could only be shot down if was absolutely certain they would die and it was still feasible at that moment for the air force to strike.

It was virtually impossible to imagine such a situation, he said. "In respect of September 11, 2001, I can't imagine that there was any chance to intervene" by shooting down one of the planes hijacked by al Qaeda.

The German court is expected to rule in several months whether the law is in line with the constitution. If it is ruled it is not, the law could not stand or would have to be redrafted.

(Reuters)

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