U.S. Special Forces' capture of Palestinian terrorist Abu Abbas in Baghdad shows the United States is making good on its pledge to hunt down terrorists as long as it takes. Abbas, now 55, masterminded the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking in which Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF) killers shot 69-year-old U.S. tourist Leon Klinghoffer in the head, then shoved him in his wheelchair overboard into the Mediterranean.
This time, the United States should not leave it to others to serve justice on Abbas. In 1985, Italian Premier Bettino Craxi ordered Abbas and his henchmen freed, after U.S. Navy jets forced down their getaway plane to a NATO base in Sicily. Abbas could be a U.S. intelligence bonanza. We should retain custody, try him for the Achille Lauro piracy and his subsequent involvement in terrorism, and put him away forever.
Italy, under U.S. pressure, later tried Abbas in absentia and sentenced him to five life terms. Now the Italians want to extradite him. They shouldn't be given another chance to blow it. On April 11, 10 men accused of the October 2000 bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole escaped a "high-security" prison in Yemen. Let's keep Abbas in U.S. custody.
The Palestinian Authority, with stunning hypocrisy, is demanding Abbas be freed on grounds a 1995 Oslo Accords interim deal between the PA and Israel, and signed by then-President Clinton, granted amnesty for violent acts committed before 1993. But PLO leader Yasser Arafat reneged on the peace deal. The Oslo accords are dead.
President Bush in his Cincinnati speech last October singled out Abbas and Abu Nidal as terrorists harbored by the Iraqi regime. Nidal was shot to death in his Baghdad apartment last August. Abbas claimed he renounced terrorism, even apologized for the Klinghoffer murder, but Israeli experts say he stayed active. Despite his so-called renunciation of terrorism, he chose to spend his "retirement" living under the protection of Saddam Hussein. Israel foiled a PLF attack on Ben-Gurion airport two years ago, and the PLF was Saddam's conduit for $35 million in payments to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Near Baghdad, Marines found a joint PLF-Iraqi terrorist training camp for bomb making. Abbas is a proven liar, killer and enemy of peace. U.S. officials should make sure this time there is no getaway and the only haven in his future is a prison cell.
