Austrian court unfreezes $10m of Palestinian terror group Abu Nidal's funds

Haaretz.com ^ | 12/09/2008 | Yossi Melman

[Man50D]

Austria's justice ministry, security services and Jewish community are furious over a Vienna Court decision to unfreeze a bank account of the Palestinian Abu Nidal terrorist group.

At the end of the 1990s the Austria Bank froze the $10 million account of Iraqi citizen Halima al-Mughrabi, on the order of Austria's intelligence services, as part of the international campaign to intensify the sanctions on Saddam Hussein's regime.

On January 13, 2000, al-Mughrabi went to her bank branch in Vienna and asked to transfer some $2 million from her account to her account in the Arab Bank in Jordan. The bank clerks held her up and called the police. She was charged with being active in the Abu Nidal organization (ANO) and managing its bank account. She was also said to be the wife of ANO's treasurer.

The judge remanded her to custody, but some time later her attorney convinced the court to release her on a $40,000 bail. The attorney, Farid Rifat, promised that al-Mughrabi would attend her trial and the court consented to return her passport to her. Al-Mugrabi fled from Austria. Rifat said she lives in Libya, and since her passport had been confiscated by the Libyan authorities she could not attend the trial.

From Libya, al-Mughrabi demanded that Austria Bank unfreeze her account and release the money. Jewish organizations and families of victims killed by ANO terrorists asked the court to have the money used to compensate terror victims. The PLO also approached Austria unofficially, claiming that the money belonged to it.