A retired assistant director of the Department of State Services (DSS), Dennis Amachree, has shared details of how Nigeria’s secret police worked alongside the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to apprehend plane hijacker Omar Rezaq in Lagos.
Amachree recounts the operation in his memoir, ‘DSS @40: My Journey Behind the Shield’, which chronicles 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), asking him to prepare for “an imminent visit from a United States Embassy security team.”
Nwaoduah instructed him to cooperate fully with the visiting team but offered 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.
He said the FBI informed him that their target was Rezaq, who was travelling from Accra, Ghana, to Nigeria aboard a Ghana Airways flight bound for the Murtala Muhammed International Airport 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.
Amachree said he deployed one of his officers to escort the FBI team to the boarding bridge, where they could keep watch over 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.
He also arranged for a privately chartered FBI Gulfstream IV aircraft to be positioned strategically to ensure a swift exit following Rezaq’s arrest.
When the Ghana Airways flight touched down, Amachree said he moved in to intercept the suspect and handed him over to the FBI agents, who immediately left Nigeria with Rezaq on board the chartered aircraft.
According to Amachree, “the entire ground operation, executed with surgical efficiency, took exactly 15 minutes.”
Rezaq was convicted in the United States in 1996 on charges including air piracy and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Amachree said the success of the operation earned him a formal plaque of commendation from then US President Bill Clinton.