Abu Abbas is captured and in American custody. The US suspected Iraq had given him sanctuary (but, no, there’s no link between Iraq and terrorism, no sirree), but evidently he’d decided it wasn’t safe to stay in Baghdad any longer (wonder why) and hightailed it off to Syria — where he was turned back at the border (heh).
Remarkably enough, the Palestinian Authority is now demanding that he be released.
Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat called on Washington to respect the 1995 peace deal – signed by then President Bill Clinton – which specified that PLO members could not be persecuted for acts of violence committed before 1993.
Under the deal, Israel’s Supreme Court in 1998 declared Abbas immune from prosecution in Israel over the Achille Lauro hijacking.
Abbas had visited the West Bank and Gaza many times in co-ordination with the Americans and the Israelis, Mr Erekat said.
But the 1995 peace deal — “Oslo II” — was between Israel and the PLO. It was signed in witness by Clinton, as well as by Russia, Egypt, Jordan, Norway and the EU, but witnessing an agreement is not the same as being bound by it.
(The pertenant section, btw, is Article XVI, Sect. 3. Again, the Article refers to “both parties,” meaning Israel and the PLO.)
So really the only question is, will he be brought back to the US for trial (for, if nothing else, the killing and dumping overboard of an American Jew, wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer), or will we let the Italians (who let him go once, but since found him guilty in absentia for masterminding the terrorist hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, and sentenced to five life terms) have their way with him? The PA, at any rate, has no legs to stand on in this case.