US 'assassinated' Abu Abbas: Palestinian group

US 'assassinated' Abu Abbas: Palestinian group
The Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF) has accused the United of the "assassination" of its leader Abu Abbas, who the Pentagon said had died of natural causes in US custody.

"We hold the US administration responsible for the assassination of Abu Abbas, the Arab Palestinian national leader," Nazem Yussef, PLF representative in Lebanon, told AFP.

"They had stopped giving him medicines for 10 days at the detention centre in Iraq, and he had been suffering from heart problems and blood pressure," Mr Yussef said.

A Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday that Abu Abbas, the Palestinian who led the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in which a wheelchair-bound American hostage was killed, died Monday in US custody.

more...................

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1063242.htm

the u.s. has very little crediblity on this issue and unless they get some neutral party to examine him, nobody will believe the "natural causes" excuse.

The rest of the world is pleased that one less murderer of wheel-chair bound innocents is gone for good.

Some don't care about justice, only revenge.

Regardless of whether he "deserved" the death penalty or not, there is nothing wrong with asking what happened to anyone who dies in government custody.

Someday you yourself might end up in the custody of some government, and you will want that government to know that people are watching them.

NT!

I do not approve of hijackings, be it a ship or airplane. But the US is pretty sick in the ways that it deals with other people and other countries.

...who said a damn thing about sympathy? Take a pill for about an hour.

Second, yes he's dead under circumstances that may not play out well for the US. Hey. I'm happy Saddam is gone, but we did it in about the worst way we could, and in a way that has actually made things worse.

Now, do you think assassinating world leaders is a goos thing for the US to get caught doing?

He was a murdering terrorist thug and nothing more.

The Pope is a world leader, as was Ghandi. The warlords in Afganistan, unfotunately, are also world leaders. Some authors and other "private individuals" have also risen to the level of world leader. Many of them are religious leaders in the Mideast.

Yes, Abu was a world leader. He was the head of an important and dangerous group with a lot of influance in that region. Having his death under cicumstances which cannot be independantly verified is not a good thing. The fact that he die in our custody makes it even worse.

It is incredibly stupid of the US to let ourselves, once again, to be put in a position where our enemies can legitimately question our actions and motives. It isn'tlike we have a boat load of credit as it is.

Don't be intentionally dense and myopic simply becasue you emotionally feel this is a good thing. We got into Iraq because of that sort of insanity.

http://www.markshep.com/nonviolence/Spell.html
http://www.medword.com/language/Ghandi.html
http://www.animation-books.com/act4anim.htm
http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/quotes.php?type=3&name=mahatma%20ghandi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_common_misspellings
http://www.linuxjournal.com/comments.php?op=Reply&pid=5886&sid=6616
http://mambo.ucsc.edu/psl/rcampbell.txt
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/1/26/13651/1347
http://www.jhsph.edu/magazineSpring02/Letters.htm

Abstract: 57 English undergraduate students studying in London consistently
misspelled "Gandhi" as "Ghandi" despite intensive exposure to the correct
spelling of the name. This is seen as an exemplary misspelling in a number
of ways, and these are outlined in the paper. It is shown that statistical
similarity to English predicts the misspelling but that statistical
similarity to English cannot override "rule-making" pressures in spelling
pseudo-Indian names, for "Ghandi" spellers also spelled the pseudo-name
"Ghalgi," while "Gandhi" spellers did not, and this spelling is not
predicted by statistical similarity alone. It is concluded that even with
minuscule lexical knowledge of "Indian" words and names, English readers
use "rules" in such tasks. This suggests that once a correct spelling has
been achieved it will be maintained, for new rules (presumably) replace
old ones. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Copyright 1985 American
Psychological Assn, all rights reserved).

to refer to him as a human being.

I am sure in a few days, we will be reading and hearing on the radio about how DU sympathized with this thug. :eyes:

...a foolish individual.

Right now, because of this incident, there are even more people in the world who believe that every American, and every Westerner to a lesser extent, is nothing but trash.

sympathize with his victims.

Please point out where I said I was sympathizing with him. You sound like Rumfled when he gets angry with question. "So I guess you'd rather Saddam Hussain was back in power." Please. What a pathetic statement with a complete absense of logic. It isn't any better when we use it.

It is what differentiates legally constituted use of force from criminal behavior. You can sympathize with victims and still want proper legal procedure carried out. Legal procedure is one of the things that protects us all from arbitrary state violence.

You're putting words in his mouth. Disgusting words.

DarkPhenyx is simply pointing out - rightly - that if there is anything untoward about the guy's death, it is important to ask questions. That does not equate to sympathy for the man's actions.

We must uphold our ideals of justice for our enemies, or we will lose the ability to uphold them for our friends. It's a matter of doing what's right, not what's expedient. Sure, we could just write off any questionable circumstances of his death, but then how can we ever be sure of what happened?

If the b*sh administration had him killed, it's important to know this, because we need to know everything about our foe that we can. It's not as if our knowing he was murdered will make us mourn the man. Clearly, he is not to be mourned by any ethical person. But then, DarkPhenyx is not saying this, and I think you know that.

You don't have to sympathize with the devil to ensure justice is done.

but he was definitely a human being. This is old news, but until we realize that humans are an animal that kills their own & until we realize that evil is created by humans not some imaginary alien species, that is, as long as we demonize the enemy instead of humanizing them, we wil continue to repeat over and over this cycle of violence.
At least I thought it was old news. Apparently not.

involved in terrorist activities prior to 1993 as part of the peace accords.

Abbas was allowed to live in freedom in Gaza by Israel.

Looks like the US is doing things that not even the very tough Israelis are willing to do.

That's why Iraq took him him, because he was so ill, and had been for years..

Not worried how it happened. Wish we had done it sooner.

it works like this. You're a murderer OK we will kill you. You're a civilian we'll kill you too. We are bloodthirsty murdering America and it does not matter who you are or what you have done we'll kill you all the same.

Step by step, whiff by whiff, we solidify the world's suspicions about us.

Please, don't try and defend him, he deserved to die. Won't we all?

The rule of law no longer exists?

We can just kill people if we decide to?

We gave the Nazi war criminals more respect than this, and they were responsible for the deaths of millions.

This is pathetic. Yeah, okay, great, he's dead. I'm not unhappy he's dead. I'm unhappy that we killed him illegally. How's that for nuance?

It's sad how so many people jump to the conclusion that the US assassinated this guy. He was already sick, he probably didn't need much help from anyone to kick off.

I shed no tears for this murderer, that's for sure.

DTH

without charges and without allowing him to have access to a lawyer. I will point that Abbas was not facing charges for the hijacking because of a peace agreement signed by the US, Israel, and the Palestinians.

And of the peace agreement you speak of. I speak only to the zero-evidence assumption that quite a few people here appear to be making that the US killed him.

DTH

and neither could any Palestinian or Israeli for crimes committed prior to the signing of the accords.

Here is a BBC backgrounder:

His capture in Baghdad in April 2003 was used by the United States as evidence that Iraq had been harbouring international terrorists, and his detention an example to others in the post-11 September, post-Saddam climate.

<snip>

He and his kind have been partly overtaken by the new zealots from al-Qaeda, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who are motivated by religion as well as nationalism.

Even Israel allowed him in and out of Gaza a few years ago as it accepted that he had given up violence and was supporting the Oslo peace process. Israel could not prosecute him under the terms of the Oslo accords anyway.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2952879.stm

What about the US? Did the US agree not to prosecute murderers of Americans? I'd be surprised if we did; I can't imagine that would go over very well with the American public.

It also says we were considering turning him over to the Italians, so I imagine at least they could have prosecuted him. I doubt he would have gotten off scot-free, regardless. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.

DTH

The Italians already had (in absentia) and had sentenced him to life inprisonment.

Links:
Bio of Abu Abbas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Abbas

BBC Story on the original capture (April '03)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2952473.stm

DTH

The article raises more questions than answers:

The life and unexplained death of a Palestinian militant

Mohamed Aboul Abbas, the 'Achille Lauro' planner, said he never intended passengers to be held hostage or anyone to be killed, and apologised for it. The US and Israel allowed him back to Gaza. So why was he in a US prison in Iraq?

By Robert Fisk
11 March 2004

When 55-year-old Mohamed Aboul Abbas died mysteriously in a US prison camp in Iraq on Tuesday, nobody bothered to call his family.

His American captors had given no indication to the International Red Cross that he had been unwell and his wife Reem first heard that he was dead when she watched an Arab television news show.

<snip>

He supported Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements and favoured the annulment of the anti-Israeli articles in the PLO's charter. Like so many of Mr Arafat's colleagues, he had undergone that mystical Middle East transformation from "super-terrorist" to peacenik. So why was he ever incarcerated in the harsh confines of America's airport prison camp outside Baghdad? He was never charged with any crime, never offered a lawyer, never allowed direct contact with his wife and family, allowed to communicate with the outside world only via the Red Cross. They were the ones who telephoned his wife Reem in Beirut more than 24 hours ago to tell her that her husband was dead.

"I know nothing about this, nothing," she wailed down the telephone to The Independent from Beirut yesterday. "How did he die? Why were we told nothing? When I first heard this terrible news on television I thought it had to be a rumour; this happens a lot out here. But then the Red Cross called at midnight and told me it was true." Mohamed Aboul Abbas is the most prominent prisoner to die in US custody in Iraq ,and joins a growing list of unexplained deaths among the 15,000 Iraqis and Palestinians held by US military forces. The occupation authorities in Iraq would only say yesterday that they were to hold a post-mortem examination on Aboul Abbas's remains.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=499955