Israeli Lawyer Seeks Arrest Warrant for Abu AbbasThe Clintonian accord won't help him with an arrest on those charges.Israeli activist lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, who heads the Israel Law Center, is urging Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein to issue a warrant for the arrest of Iraq-based terrorist mastermind Mahmoud Abu Abbas. Abbas, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, heads the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), which is responsible for the murder and wounding of numerous Israelis and Americans in PLF attacks since the mid-1970s. The anticipated American incursion into Iraq will allow United States military forces to capture the terrorist leader, who can then be extradited to Israel for trial.
Attorney Darshan-Leitner claims that Israel has clear proof of Abbas’ responsibility for the recent murder of Jerusalem teenager, Yuri Gustchin and a Haifa terrorist bombing that seriously wounded five civilians. Confessions from PLF members captured in November 2001 implicate Abbas in numerous other terrorist attacks. And in 1979, Abbas’ terrorist group carried out an attack on an Israeli apartment building in Naharia that killed a family of four, including two young children. In 1985, Abbas perpetrated the infamous hijacking of the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro, during which the PLF took four hundred of the ship’s passengers hostage and murdered an elderly wheelchair-bound American, Leon Klinghoeffer. Although allowed to relocate to Gaza in May 1998 by the Netanyahu government, by October 2000 Abbas had reappeared in Iraq and announced that he had trained a terrorist cell in Gaza for attacks on Israelis.
“The Attorney General’s office has repeatedly refused to arrest Abbas and to prosecute him for his murder of Jews around the world,” stated Darshan-Leitner, “Each time the PLF leader has been given another chance by the government to prove himself, he succeeds in killing more Israeli civilians. It’s time for the Attorney General to finally issue an arrest warrant against Abbas for the murder of Yuri Gustchin and make his capture a national priority.”