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
