- Palestinian groups have reacted with fury to the death
in US custody of Abu Abbas, mastermind of the 1985 Achille Lauro cruise
ship hijacking.
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- Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF),
apparently died of natural causes, US officials said.
-
- He was convicted in absentia by an Italian court for
the attack, in which wheelchair-bound American tourist Leon Klinghoffer
was killed.
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- Abbas was captured in Baghdad last year by US special
forces.
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- Poetic justice
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- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat led the tributes, issuing
a statement describing Abbas as "an exceptional combatant and nationalist
chief who devoted his life to serving his people and homeland."
-
- The PLF accused the US of "assassination",
alleging that Abbas, who suffered heart problems and high blood pressure,
was denied access to medicines in the days before he died. His widow, Reem
Nimr, vowed to bury him on Palestinian soil.
-
- "I accuse the Americans of having killed him since
he died in their custody, either they killed him directly or they neglected
him," she told the French news agency AFP at her home in Beirut.
-
- A senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
called his death "poetic justice".
-
- "The man who began his operation in Iraq as a proxy
of Saddam Hussein...finds his death in a prison cell in Iraq under the
control of the American forces," Raanan Gissin was quoted by the Associated
Press as saying.
-
- "I think this brings full circle the story, the
saga, of the arch-terrorist called Abu Abbas."
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- Klinghoffer killing
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- Pentagon officials said that Abbas, who was in his mid-50s,
had died on Monday, most likely of a heart attack; an autopsy will be performed.
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- Abbas was one of several PLF members who carried out
the 1985 attack on the Achille Lauro, in an attempt to secure the release
of 50 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel.
-
- The ship was seized while sailing between the Egyptian
cities of Alexandria and Port Said.
-
- During the two-day stand-off, the gunmen killed Klinghoffer,
an elderly US Jew confined to a wheelchair, and threw his body overboard.
-
- Klinghoffer's family said on Tuesday that Abbas' death
had robbed them of justice for the killing: the one consolation was that
he died in captivity.
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- Iraq capture
-
- After the stand-off, Egypt gave free passage to the hijackers
in exchange for the rest of the hostages - many of them Americans.
-
- But the plane carrying the hijackers to Tunisia was intercepted
by US Navy jets and forced to land in Italy.
-
- Abbas' co-conspirators were sentenced to long prison
terms, but he was freed by the Italian authorities, who said they had insufficient
evidence to detain him.
-
-
- However, he was later convicted in absentia of masterminding
the hijacking and received five life sentences.
-
- Abbas reportedly spent around 17 years in Iraq before
his capture there in 2003.
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- In 1996, he described the killing of Klinghoffer as a
mistake.
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- © BBC MMIV
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- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3498668.stm
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