Zero Hour

- Season 3

(2007)

10th of September 2000. Six British soldiers are held hostage deep in the jungle of Sierra Leone. Their captors are one of the most vicious gangs in west Africa, The West Side Boys.

Documenting the hours leading up to the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia.

The brutal massacre of ten members of the Nepalese Royal Family in June 2001 shocked the world, and brought a nation to the brink of destruction. As the whole of Nepal struggled to come to terms with the senseless slaughter, many refused to believe the truth: that Crown Prince Dipendra had gunned down nine members of his own family.

On April 22 1997 in Lima Peru, a deadly game is in play for the lives of 72 men, held hostage for 126 days by a revolutionary guerrilla movement at the Japanese Ambassador's residence. On one side of the siege is Nestor Cerpa Cartolini, a revolutionary and desperate man willing to kill for the woman he loves; on the other side a ruthless and corrupt political czar, Vladimiro Montesinos.

As two armed-robbers terrorise staff and customers inside a Bank of America branch in San Fernando Valley, North Hollywood, they are oblivious to the mounting police presence outside the building. The scene is set for the most extraordinary and violent shootout in modern American police history.

This episode tells the story of Air France Flight 8969 which was an Air France flight that was hijacked on December 24, 1994 at Houari Boumedienne Airport in Algiers by four armed men dressed as Algerian policemen. The pilot was eventually ordered to fly the plane to Marseilles, France and the crisis was ultimately resolved by the GIGN, the intervention group of the French Gendarmerie ( a law-enforcement agency ), with minimal casualties to passengers. All four hijackers were killed by the GIGN during the gun battle to end the hijacking.