"The PA said Abbas should have been released under a 1995 immunity accord made between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel .."
March 11 2004-The Pentagon and the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) confirmed late Tuesday the death of PLF leader and member of the PLO National Council Mohammad Abbas (Abu El-Abbas) while in the custody of US occupation forces in Iraq. The PLF held the US responsible for Abbas’ death and said his family received a letter from him last week saying he was in good health.
US occupation forces in Iraq arrested Abbas on April 14, following the fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The Palestinian leadership said Abbas should have been released under a 1995 immunity accord made between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israeli government. But US officials claimed Abbas was not covered by the accord, according to AFP.
When Abbas was captured last spring, the Palestine National Authority (PNA) demanded his release, saying the United States had pledged not to prosecute him as part of an agreement not to press charges against Palestinians who acted against Israel before interim peace accords were signed in the early 1990s.
The United States also endorsed a 1995 interim peace deal that grants PLO members immunity for violent acts committed before September 1993, when the two sides signed a mutual recognition agreement, AP reported.
In April 1996, Abbas visited the Gaza Strip for the first time, as part of the amnesty offered by Israel.
In 1998, he returned to attend a session of the Palestine National Council, the Palestinians’ parliament-in-exile, for a crucial vote on abrogating chapters of the PLO founding charter calling for Israel’s destruction. In the end, Abbas did not participate in the vote.
At that time, Israeli attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein said Abbas did not pose a threat to Israeli security, and that it would be unreasonable to prosecute him for acts committed before 1993.
Pentagon claimed he died "apparently ...of natural causes."
"Initial reports indicate he died of natural causes," said Bryan Whitman, the Pentagon spokesman. "Medical efforts to revive him were unsuccessful and autopsy will be performed."
He died on Monday in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, the spokesman said.
Whitman declined to answer further questions, including whether Abbas still was being interrogated in the period before his death.
Another Pentagon official told AFP on condition of anonymity: "Most people suspect it was a heart attack," adding, "It’s likely the cause of death would have been cardiac failure given his medical history."
Abbas was captured in a raid on the southern outskirts of Baghdad by US forces in April and lived the last 11 months of his life in American custody.
Abbas’ death was initially announced by officials in Palestinian leader Yaser Arafat’s office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, AP reported. No cause of death was given by the Palestinians.
However the PNA, the PLF and Abbas’ family in Lebanon all denied they had received any official confirmation from the US side.
The PLF office in Ramallah said Tuesday it received information from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirming the "martyrdom" of Abbas in one of the prisons run by US occupation forces in Iraq, the Palestinian daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah reported on Wednesday.
"In strong sorrow and anger we received the news on the martyrdom of the Secretary-General from the ICRC, but we haven’t received an official statement," the PLF spokesman Wasel Abu Yusef said.
The PLF held the US Administration and its occupation forces responsible for the death of Abbas, whom they were detaining without any legal justification and without filing any charges against him, Abu Yusef said.
Abu Yusef refuted the Pentagon’s statement that Abbas died of natural causes, saying that the ICRC handed a letter from Abbas to his family last week in which he said he was in good health.
The late Abbas was a member of the PLO’s executive committee, but left in 1991. However, he retained his membership in the PLO’s National Council.
Abbas was born in 1948 in the Yarmouk refugee camp for Palestinians in Syria, after his family was forced out from their home in Tira, near Haifa, by Zionist paratroopers when the state of Israel was created.
He attended Damascus University and graduated with a degree in Arabic literature. He also became involved in student politics and in 1967 joined George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
He fought as a guerrilla against the Israeli occupiers of his homeland. But Abbas and others felt that group was focusing too much on political philosophy rather than armed struggle.
In 1976, Abbas took his followers to form a new faction, the Palestine Liberation Front.
Abbas had been convicted in absentia in an Italian court for the 1985 hijacking of Achille Lauro off Port Said, Egypt, and sentenced to life in prison in 1986, but never served any time.
After Jewish American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, overboard the Achille Lauro was killed, the other passengers were released after a two-day ordeal and the commandos surrendered to Egyptian authorities, who put them on a flight to PLO headquarters in Tunisia.
US Navy fighters forced the flight down in Sicily. The Italians, to the Americans’ dismay, allowed Abbas to flee to Yugoslavia.
Klinghoffer’s daughters, Lisa and Ilsa Klinghoffer, said that Abbas’ death deprived them of the right to hold him legally accountable.
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=20040311124955235
