Pakistan Releases Palestinian Hijackers

These scumbags originally were sentenced to death, had those sentences commuted to life in prison and now walk free. No doubt they'll be welcomed home as conquering heroes.

Who said terrorism doesn't pay?

Pakistan Releases 4 in 1986 Hijacking

Pakistani authorities freed four Palestinians on Thursday who were convicted in the 1986 hijacking of a Pan Am jet in Karachi that left 22 passengers and crew dead, a prison official said.

The men were released after completing their jail terms and deported to the Palestinian territories, said the official on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The alleged leader of the group, a Palestinian called Zayd Hassan Abd Al-Latif Masud Al Safarini, was released from prison in Pakistan in 2001 through a series of amnesties, but was arrested a day later by FBI agents in Bangkok on his way to Jordan.

In 2003, a U.S court sentenced Safarini to three consecutive life terms plus 25 years for his role in the hijacking.

The five men hijacked the Pan Am Boeing 747 as it sat at Karachi airport waiting to fly to Frankfurt, Germany, en route to New York. They were demanding the release of 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israel and Cyprus.

Later the same day, Pakistani commandos stormed the plane and the hijackers began shooting and throwing hand grenades at the passengers and crew they had herded into one area of the plane, according to court papers presented at the U.S. trial of Safarini.

In all, 22 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. The five men were arrested.

At a 1988 trial in Pakistan, the Palestinians admitted carrying out the hijacking, but blamed Pakistani troops for the passengers' deaths. All five were given death sentences that were commuted to life in prison, which means serving 14 years in Pakistan.

The men had been held in a high-security prison in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near the capital Islamabad.

Rawalpindi, of course, is now notorious as the location of Benazir Bhutto's assassination last week. Bhutto was in power when their sentences were reduced to the alleged life in prison.

The prison official gave the names of those released Thursday as Mohammed Abdul Khalil Hussain, Daud Mohammed Hafiz, Mohammed Ahmed al-Munawar and Jamal Saeed.

More on Sarafini here. He apparently was a member of Abu Nidal's terror crew.

Nidal was reportedly murdered by Saddam Hussein after refusing to train Al Qaeda fighters.

Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist, was murdered on the orders of Saddam Hussein after refusing to train al-Qa'eda fighters based in Iraq, The Telegraph can reveal.

Despite claims by Iraqi officials that Abu Nidal committed suicide after being implicated in a plot to overthrow Saddam, Western diplomats now believe that he was killed for refusing to reactivate his international terrorist network.

According to reports received from Iraqi opposition groups, Abu Nidal had been in Baghdad for months as Saddam's personal guest, and was being treated for a mild form of skin cancer.

While in Baghdad, Abu Nidal, whose real name was Sabri al-Banna, came under pressure from Saddam to help train groups of al-Qa'eda fighters who moved to northern Iraq after fleeing Afghanistan. Saddam also wanted Abu Nidal to carry out attacks against the US and its allies.