Abu Abbas This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Captured cruise-ship hijacker dies in U.S. custody in Iraq

   seattletimes.nwsource.com/html - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/10/2004   Last Visited: 3/11/2004

   Abu Abbas
   ...
   WASHINGTON - Abu Abbas, the Palestinian mastermind of the 1985 Achille Lauro cruise-ship hijacking, died while in U.S. military custody in Iraq, the Pentagon said yesterday.
   
   Abbas had been held by the U.S. military since he was captured in Baghdad in April.
   
   Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said Abbas died Monday, apparently of natural causes.
   ...
   The official said Abbas, believed to be 56, had a history of heart disease. An autopsy is planned.
   
   Pentagon officials would not say where Abbas had been held in Iraq.
   
   Abbas was captured when Marines swarmed a suspected training camp on the outskirts of Baghdad. It was not known whether Abbas had a role in the training camp, which at the time was described as a facility operated by the Palestine Liberation Front, a splinter group of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
   
   Israeli intelligence officials say the PLF faction under Abbas was a conduit for Saddam Hussein's payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Israel reported earlier this year that it captured several Palestinians who trained at a PLF camp in Iraq and were told by Abbas to attack an Israeli airport and other targets.
   
   Abbas headed the PLF in 1985, when several of its members commandeered the Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise ship that was leaving Egypt on its way to Israel and demanded the release of 50 Palestinians held by Israel.
   ...
   U.S. Navy fighters forced the plane to land in Sicily, where four hijackers and Abbas were arrested. The Italians concluded they lacked sufficient evidence to hold Abbas and released him. Since then, he had been sentenced in absentia to five life terms in Italy.
   
   After Abbas' capture last year, the Palestinian Authority had demanded his release, saying the United States had pledged not to prosecute him as part of an agreement not to press charges against Palestinians who acted against Israel before interim peace accords were signed in the 1990s.
   ...
   In the mid-1990s, Abbas apologized for the shooting of Klinghoffer, saying it was part of a botched "military" operation.