This is the third of five posts on The Trials of Rasmea Odeh.
Rasmea Odeh's PFLP comrades made numerous attempts to coerce her freedom through hijackings and hostage taking. In 1970, the quadruple airplane hijackings of "Black September" were carried out in the name of "Task Force Rasmea Odeh." Her freedom was again sought in a foiled hijacking in May 1972, and her name was on the list of prisoners whose release was demanded by the guerrillas who carried out the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The PFLP was finally successful in March 1979, when the Israelis released 76 prisoners, Odeh among them, in exchange for an IDF soldier captured in Lebanon.
Odeh's release was celebrated by a full-page poem in the PFLP magazine, which praised her for having joined "the troops of the revolution" with "a prophecy of the gun." She settled in Amman, Jordan, where she obtained a law degree and worked as a university researcher, calling it "the best period in my life."
