BAGHDAD, 11 March 2004 — Palestinian groups hit out at US forces yesterday after Abu Abbas, mastermind of a 1985 hijacking of a cruise ship in which a wheelchair-bound American Jew was murdered, died in their custody in Iraq.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) called for an inquiry while Abbas’ own small radical Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF) accused the US military of killing him by depriving him of medication.
For his part, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called Abbas, who died on Monday in a US military jail in Iraq and whose real name was Mohammed Abbas, a martyr. Abbas’ widow said US troops had, at the very least, neglected him.
“We demand an international inquiry to determine the exact causes of death,” Mohamed Sobhi, the PLO representative in Iraq, told reporters.
“We will not be satisfied with American explanations that Abu Abbas died of natural causes,” he said.
US Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad an autopsy would be carried out soon. “We expect it to confirm that Mr. Abbas died of natural causes.”
But at the Beirut home of Reem Nimr, Abu Abbas’ widow, a PLF spokesman said: “We hold the US administration responsible for the assassination of Abu Abbas, the Arab Palestinian national leader.”
Nazem Yussef, PLF politburo member and representative in Lebanon, said that “they had stopped giving him medicines for 10 days at the detention center in Iraq, and he had been suffering from heart problems and blood pressure.”
US forces took Abu Abbas into custody in Iraq on April 14 after ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. His arrest was hailed by the Pentagon and White House as proof of Saddam’s links with “international terrorism”.
A US military official in Baghdad told reporters that Abu Abbas was being “held somewhere in Baghdad” but then changed his statement to “somewhere in Iraq.”
Many of the top members of Saddam’s ousted regime are being detained at Baghdad international airport.
Arafat and the Palestinian leadership described Abbas as “an exceptional combatant and nationalist chief who devoted his life to serving his people and homeland,” in a statement to the WAFA news agency.
Nimr told reporters: “I accuse the Americans of having killed him, since he died in their custody; either they killed him directly or they neglected him.”
“We want to bury him in Palestine,” said Nimr, wiping tears from her eyes as she sat next to her 17-year-old son Ali, the youngest of Abu Abbas’ three boys.
Asked about the place of burial, Yussef said: “Details will be known after the meeting we have arranged for this morning with the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) in Lebanon.”
Two US Nationals, Iraqi Translator Shot Dead in Central Iraq
Three civilians, including two Americans, have been shot dead in central Iraq in what appeared to be an operation by a gang dressed in police uniform, officials said yesterday.
The authorities were investigating whether genuine police officers or attackers in disguise had killed the American man and woman from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and their female translator on Tuesday evening, a senior police official said.
