劫持(hijacking)
用暴力或暴力威胁从别人手里夺取或控制车辆的犯罪行为。尽管到20世纪後期，劫持大多是指夺取飞机并强迫改变航线飞往劫持者选择的目的地，但这个词是在1920年代的美国创造出来的，当时这个词是指在公路上盗窃卡车上装运的私酒，或者类似地在海上劫夺酒类走私船只。劫持飞机也叫做空中劫持。第一起这样的劫持案件发生在1931年的秘鲁。就在1968到1970年之间就发生了大约两百起劫持事件。参与者往往是出於政治动机的巴勒斯坦人或其他的阿拉伯人，他们指挥飞行中的飞机并威胁乘客和机组成员的人身安全，条件是要释放被关在以色列或其他地方的监狱里的他们的同志。在1980年代和1990年代里继续发生着飞机劫持事件，尽管由於飞机安全措施的改进以及国际反恐怖公约的签订可能已大大减少了这类事件的数量。至今最致命的一次空中掠夺行为发生在2001年9月，自杀性的恐怖分子在美国同时劫持了四架飞机，其中两架飞入纽约市的世界贸易中心两座大楼，一架飞入华盛顿特区的五角大楼，第四架坠落在宾夕法尼亚州匹兹堡市的郊外。这几起撞机事件造成机上266人以及大楼和地面几千人的死亡。亦请参阅piracy。
English version：
hijacking
Crime of seizing possession or control of a vehicle from another by force or threat of force. Although by the late 20th century hijacking most frequently involved the seizure of an airplane and its forcible diversion to destinations chosen by the air pirates, when the term was coined in the 1920s in the U.S. hijacking generally referred to in-transit thefts of truckloads of illegally manufactured liquor or to the similar seizure of rumrunners at sea. Airplane hijacking is also known as skyjacking. The first reported case of such hijacking occurred in Peru in 1931. Between 1968 and 1970 alone there were nearly 200 hijackings. The participants often were politically motivated Palestinians or other Arabs who commandeered airplanes while in flight and threatened harm to the passengers and crew unless certain of their comrades were released from jail in Israel or some other location. Air hijackings continued in the 1980s and '90s, though new airport security measures and international agreements on terrorism probably deterred many more. The deadliest act of air piracy ever occurred in September 2001, when suicide terrorists simultaneously hijacked four airliners in the United States and flew two of them into the World Trade Center complex in New York City and one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.; the fourth crashed outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The crashes killed 266 people aboard the airplanes and thousands more in the buildings and on the ground. See also piracy.