Post by hunt4fun1 on Mar 10, 2004 12:02:36 GMT -5
Palestinian Group: U.S. Assassinated Abbas
23 minutes ago
By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer
BEIRUT, Lebanon - A Palestinian guerrilla group accused the United States of assassinating its leader, Abul Abbas, and his widow said Wednesday that America must account for his death since he was in its custody.
Abbas, 56, died Monday in U.S. detention in Iraq (news - web sites). He was the mastermind of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro passenger ship, during which a wheelchair-bound Jewish American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, was thrown overboard after being shot.
Pentagon (news - web sites) spokesman Bryan Whitman said Abbas died "apparently ... of natural causes" and an autopsy was planned.
"We certainly expect to confirm that Mr. Abbas died of natural causes," said Maj. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. deputy chief of operations in Iraq.
The Palestine Liberation Front said in a statement from Beirut that U.S. forces of assassinating Abbas.
"The assassination of commander Abul Abbas by the U.S. occupation forces in Iraq after arresting him without any legal justification since the first days of their occupation of Iraq confirms beyond any doubt their absolute hostility to our people and exposes their designs which conform with the Zionist entity," the statement said.
Other Palestinian officials also blamed the United States.
"I think that when the Americans arrested him and he died now in their jail, it's a crime and the Americans are responsible for the death of Abul Abbas," said Jibril Rajoub, security adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites).
Abbas was convicted in absentia by an Italian court for the hijacking and sentenced to life in prison in 1986, but never served any time. Abbas, whose given name was Mohammed Abbas, was captured in Baghdad by U.S. forces last April and spent the last 11 months in American custody.
His death was reported Wednesday by Palestinian officials.
His widow, Reem Nimer, said she wanted the Americans to explain how he died.
"Abul Abbas was in their detention centers. Since he was detained by them (U.S. forces), they are directly responsible for him," Nimer said in an interview with Associated Press Television News.
"They know how Abul Abbas died a martyr. Was he deprived of a medicine which led to a deterioration of his health? Or did he suffer a sudden stroke? Or was he tortured? We have the right to ask all these questions and they (Americans) must answer them," Nimer said, tears in her eyes.
"The Americans are responsible for him — morally and physically. They are the only ones who know how Abul Abbas died," she added.
Nimer lives with her son Ali, 20, in a Beirut apartment. She rejected the labeling of her husband as a terrorist, saying he fought for his homeland, Palestine.
"The Zionist and American propaganda accused him of being a terrorist while he was a patriotic man committed to his national cause," Nimer said. "He was not a terrorist. He was a fighter who struggled for the liberation of his country."
Nimer has met an official of the International Committee of the Red Cross to discuss how to retrieve his body for burial in the Palestinian territories. If Israel rejected that, she said, "we will look for any Arab country."
Abbas' eldest son, Ali, described his father as "a brave man who taught me manhood."
Ali said he planned to follow in his father's footsteps: "I don't know if I will use the same method. But we must do something because our country is occupied by the Jews."
Ali said he last saw his father when he visited Iraq shortly before the U.S.-led invasion began in March 2003.
Omar Shibli, Abbas' deputy in the PLF, said he had received letters from Abbas in recent months and that Abbas had never complained of ill health.
"Abul Abbas' detention was illegal and his condition in the jail was very bad," Shibli said. "The Americans treated him in a way that led to his death in his prison cell."
About 20 mourners congregated in Shibli's Gaza City office, as somber Koranic verses played in the background. A large picture of Abbas hung on the wall, surrounded by flowers sent by former Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan.
Shibli said that formal mourning rites for Abbas would be conducted in the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan beginning Thursday.
Wednesday's session of the Palestinian Legislative Council in the West Bank city of Ramallah began with a moment of silence in his honor.
In Jerusalem, Raanan Gissin, a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites), called Abbas' death "poetic justice."
"The man who began his operation in Iraq as a proxy of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) ... finds his death in a prison cell in Iraq under the control of the American forces," he said. "I think this brings full circle the story, the saga, of the arch-terrorist called Abul Abbas."
In Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, Ein el-Hilweh, outside the southern city of Sidon, PLF members received condolences.
In Syria, two radical groups, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, also blamed the United States for Abbas' death.
