Posted on 04/18/2003 3:59:25 PM PDT by SJackson
The American capture of arch-terrorist Mohammed Abu Abbas in Iraq this week was applauded almost throughout the world. Senior PA official Saeb Erekat called for his "immediate" release, and other Arab sources also expressed dismay, but elsewhere the arrest was seen as the beginning of a process that will lead to the meting out of true justice against a major terrorist mastermind.
Abu Abbas, a PLO Executive Council member and head of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), is wanted in the United States for the hijacking of Americans on the Achille Lauro cruise liner and the murder of the wheelchair-bound Jewish American citizen Leon Klinghoffer in 1985.
The Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center said it "applauds" the arrest. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled twice, in 1996 and 1998, that the Achille Lauro case was covered by the "Oslo immunity" clause, which provides immunity for terrorism committed before the beginning of the Oslo process in 1993. However, Shurat HaDin notes that Abbas' more recent terrorist crimes are not similarly covered. The Center recently asked Attorney-General Elyakim Rubenstein to indict Abbas for the murder of Jerusalem teenager Yuri Gushchin in Ramallah in July 2001, as well as for other terrorist bombings and attempted attacks. Rubenstein has not yet responded.
Abbas was permitted to move to and live in Gaza in 1998, after he claimed to "support" the Oslo Process. However, he left Gaza for Iraq a year later, and in 2000 boasted to a local magazine that he had established a terror network in the PA during his stay, and that it would be activated to carry out suicide operations against Israel.
The U.S. and Italy are currently attempting to work out which of the two will try Abbas, but Israel Law Center head Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner says it doesn't make a difference. "Regardless of whether the United States or Italy prosecutes and imprisons Abu Abbas for the murder of Klinghoffer in 1985," she says, "Israel has a moral and legal obligation to prosecute him for the brutal killing of Yuri Gushchin in 2001 and the other terrorist attacks carried out by [his PLF terrorist organization]. The murder of Yuri Gushchin and the wounding of other Israel citizens in terror attacks could have been avoided had the High Court ordered the government to arrest Abbas back in 1996 or in 1999. Instead, he was allowed to enter Gaza and continue organizing terrorist attacks against Israel from within the PA."
Darshan-Leitner is representing a civil suit in the Jerusalem District Court against Abu Abbas and the PLO on behalf of survivors of the Achille Lauro hijacking.
Meanwhile, PA leaders demand that the US "respect the 1995 PLO-Israel interim agreement signed by [then-]U.S. President Bill Clinton" stating that PLO members cannot be tried for acts committed before September 1993. The PA thus ignores the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Abbas' men *after* 1993, as well as the fact that the U.S. is not bound by the bilateral agreement between Israel and the PLO.
To hell with the PC crowd. He should be tried by the US, given a fair trial then executed.
-PJ
To hell with the PC crowd. He should be tried by the US, given a fair trial then executed.
That's what I said. After the US has executed him the Israelis can put his smelly corpse on trial. After the Israelis are finished, he can serve out his sentence in Italy.
Bush should publically rescind the U.S. signature, as he did with Kyoto, and then try and execute Abbas. The was an "interim" agreement and is not binding. My inside sources tell me the State Department is applying massive pressure on the West Wing to let Italy have Abbas, since they did not sign the accord. I am also told that Powell himself has complained about Rummy's tough Syria rhetoric, and that has resulted in this silly talk of Powell possibly visiting Damascus. Foggy Bottom continues to undermine this President at every juncture.
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