Hijacker Abu Abbas dies in Iraq-source

[mobuto]

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Abu Abbas, the Palestinian mastermind of the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking in 1985, has died of natural causes in U.S. custody in Iraq, a top Palestinian official has told Reuters.

--Continued--

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=...

[Caution]

1. If natural causes include:

1.) Being beaten to death
2.) Electrocution
or
3.) A bullet in the head

than yeh i guess that is probably how he did die.

[everythingsxen]

2. Yes, a heart-attack while being tortured is natural

Oh wait, I forgot, we are the US, the good guys.. we would *never* do that....

[Walt Starr]

3. Of course he died of natural causes

A bullet in the brain will quite naturally kill someone.

[underpants]

14. Maybe he fell down

oh about 37 times.

[demdave]

4. He died more peacefully than he deserved.

The terrorists kill a disabled American tourist, 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer, and throw his body overboard with his wheelchair. Only by virtue of our scrambling f-14 and forcing his "getaway" plane to land in Sicily did he ever end up in custody in the first place.

[tom_paine]

19. Good point.

Do two wrongs make a right? Are we right to applaud barbarities performed on barbarians, so to speak?

I don;t know, but you bring up a good point in the death of Mr. Klinghoffer.

I'll shed no tears for Abbas, that's for sure!

[VolcanoJen]

49. I'll honestly never forget Leon Klinghoffer.

It was the first act of brutal terrorism that I remember having really affected me, and the cruelty of the way he was killed absolutely scorched my very young mind at the time.

I'll always grimace a little at the memory of the way Leon Klinghoffer died. I will not grieve for Abu Abbas, or any other murderer who participated in that heinous act.

And yes, I'm a liberal, and yes, I mourn the victims of terrorism worldwide.

[Minstrel Boy]

5. More mercenary than mastermind.

In Profits of War, former IDF intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe wrote that the Achille Lauro hijacking was a black flag operation engineered by Israel to poison European opinion towards Palestinians. Undercover Mossad officers paid Abbas millions of dollars to assemble a team and attack the ship.

Menashe writes:

"That was, in fact, an Israeli 'black' propaganda operation to show what a deadly, cutthroat bunch the Palestinians were.

"The team was told to make it bad, to show the world what lay in store for other unsuspecting citizens if Palestinian demands were not met. As the world knows, the group picked on an elderly American Jewish man in a wheelchair, killed him, and threw his body overboard. They made their point. But for Israel, it was the best kind of anti- Palestinian propaganda."

[mobuto]

6. Bwahaha

Why stop there? Why not say that there is no such thing as Palestinian terrorism?

[Barrett808]

7. What's your position on Ari Ben Menashe? n/t

n/t

[mobuto]

9. He's a complete and utter fraud

He's a ubiquitous pathological liar, who goes around claiming to have been a senior James Bond-style spy. In reality, he was a low level IDF translator. At various times, he's claimed to have been a commando who led the raid on Entebbe and that he was the one who destroyed Iraq's reactor at Osirak.

[Barrett808]

31. Mark Phythian caught him in a fib re his claimed meeting with Cardoen

Menashe claimed he saw Mark Thatcher there.

[Minstrel Boy]

8. nyuk nyuk nyuk

And why should you stop there? Why not say that there is no such thing as false-flag operations?

And the Abbas claim isn't mine. It's that of a former officer of Israeli intelligence, someone whose name pops up in stories such as the Inslaw affair, who's been a player in international arms trade.

[mobuto]

11. A Player in the International Arms trade?

Its clear you have no idea who Ari Ben-Menashe (aka Leonard Zelig) is.

[Minstrel Boy]

16. Menashe has a way of making extraordinary claims

that are later proven true.

He's a shady character. Big surprise he'd find work in the intelligence field and as a freelance "fixer."

Menashe's INSLAW affidavit:
http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/casolaro/inslwbam.ht...

Journanlist Mark Davis, regarding a video of Menashe meeting with a Zimbabwe opposition leader to plot the overthrow of Mugabe:
"It is not a matter of speculation. It is not a matter of can you believe Ari Ben Menashe's word as to what occurs at this meeting. It is beyond dispute what occurs at this meeting and to us, that is the basis of our confidence of running this story in the first place, it goes back consistently to the tape."
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/africa/02/26/zimbabwe...

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

17. Robert Parry talks a lot about him on Trick Or Treason.

It's an October Surprise book. In it he writes that Ben Menashe seems to be full of shit. But at the same time he was able to corroborate a lot of the info he got from him. He went all the way to Israel to check out his claims but the gov. there seemed to contradict itself about Ben Menashe's work and position. Parry is by no means an idiot or a "conspiracy theorist", for whatever that's worth.

[Minstrel Boy]

21. "Full of shit. But..."

"It's an October Surprise book. In it he writes that Ben Menashe seems to be full of shit. But at the same time he was able to corroborate a lot of the info he got from him."

Thanks, you said it well.

I've heard similar descriptions for Delmart Vreeland, including by my oldest friend who was his attorney. Full of shit, you can't tell when he's lying to you. But...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1205-10.htm

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

22. You know this guys' attorney? Damn!

[Minstrel Boy]

24. It was from him

that I first learned what a rabbit hole 9/11 was. My head hasn't stopped swimming.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

26. Yeah I know. Weird huh?

[Zhade]

55. Is Vreeland dead?

I'd heard that he was. Your friend stands a good chance of knowing.

[Minstrel Boy]

57. He doesn't know.

He found signs of a struggle in Vreeland's apartment, and important evidence was missing. But he hopes he's alive: Vreeland still owes him $$$ for his defense.

If anyone should have cause to dismiss Vreeland as a con man, it's my friend. But he saw too many things, and verified too much of Vreeland's story, to do that. Whatever else Vreeland may be, he's not just a con man.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

59. If you find out. Let us know.

I had lost track of the story, till you brought it up just now.

[Barrett808]

27. Menashe was acquitted of the Iranian C-130 arms charges, iirc n/t

[mobuto]

18. Shady? LOL

He's not shady, he's a pathological liar and a career con artist. Nothing he's said has turned out to be correct. The man was hired by Mugabe to set up Tsvangrai. He's had absolutely nothing to do with the intelligence field.

[The Stranger]

29. Are you going to suport some of these claims?

Or just keep repeating them unsupported?

[mobuto]

35. Which claims are you referring to?

I'm not the one making bogus assertions that Achille Lauro was perpetrated by Israel. Not one of this guys claims about Israel has been proven correct. And I defy you to prove me wrong. Moreover, his claims about himself are simply outlandish. To listen to him is to hear the second coming of Ian Fleming, with the part of James Bond played by Mr. Menashe himself. Do you really believe that he was the leader of the raid on Entebbe? A junior IDF translator?

From the December 14, 1991 Toronto Sun:

"Reporters like Emerson agree Hersh's claim that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir passed the Pollard secrets to Moscow is a figment of the imagination of a former low-level Israeli defense department translator, Ari Ben-Menashe, who portrayed himself as a top intelligence agent.

Newsweek's national security correspondent, John Barry, said on CNN, "Ben-Menashe is a fabricator... If you were talking about the American Civil War, he would tell you he was the guy who planned Lee's campaign."

The London Times discovered Ben-Menashe had resigned under pressure in 1987 from a poorly paid and menial job. He tried to parlay this into peddling influence among arms dealers. He took unauthorized trips abroad paid for by his mother, to con the merchants of death into believing he knew how to secretly market arms to foreign governments because of his high-level Israeli defense clearances. In fact, his Israeli personnel file described him as "delusional" and he was denied special security clearance in the early 1980s.

[The Stranger]

36. Start with these.

He's not shady, he's a pathological liar and a career con artist. Nothing he's said has turned out to be correct.

[mobuto]

39. What fun

He's not shady, he's a pathological liar and a career con artist. Nothing he's said has turned out to be correct.

That same Toronto Sun article I referred to in my last post refers to him as a "professional liar." Whether or not his lying is pathological in nature, or simply reflective of career decisions, is probably not for me to say. He just lies constantly.

As an example, Menashe has claimed to have been the commander of the Raid at Entebbe. This is absurd. The commander of the raid at Entebbe was Yoni Netanyahu, who was killed during the course of the operation.

Ben-Menashe has been described by the Jerusalem Post (March 6, 1992) as "a notorious, chronic liar." Newsweek --which is hardly sympathetic to Israel-- wrote about Ben-Menashe: "Much of what Ben-Menashe says does not seem to check out." (Nov. 4, 1991) Newsweek checked Secret Service logs to see if then-Vice President George Bush could have been in Paris on October 19, 1980, the day Ben-Menashe claims he saw Bush secretly meet with Iranian officials to arrange a delay of the release of the U.S. hostages in Iran; Newsweek found that "on Oct.19, the logs show, gave a speech before the Zionist Organization of America at the Capital Hilton ."

Steven Emerson, the award-winning investigative journalist, has described Ben-Menashe as "an abject liar." Emerson has also pointed out that over the years, Ben-Menashe has made numerous demonstrably false claims, including that "he was a commander of the Israeli raid to free hijacked airline passengers at Entebbe in 1976, that he planted a homing device in the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak just before the Israeli attack in 1981... and that he had declined an offer to become head of the Mossad." (Wall Street Journal, Nov.27, 1991)

In November 1990, "ABC News gave Ben-Menashe a lie-detector test" concerning his allegations about Israel and the Iran-Contra affair; "according to Christopher Isham, an ABC producer, Ben-Menashe failed it." (Newsweek, Nov. 11, 1991)

[Just Me]

41. Mobuto,..."allegations", "descriptions", "opinions", etc.

Just in case you didn't know,...do not add up to P-R-O-O-F!!!

Present EVIDENCE.

Can you do that?

[Name removed]

44. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mobuto]

46. Uh, I thought I did

For the reading impaired, a couple of his claims:

1. He claimed to have seen George Bush in Paris when he was giving a speech in Washington. After consulting with physicists, I can say for sure that this is not possible.

2. He claimed to have been the leader of the Raid at Entebbe. This is impossible. The raid is very well documented. The leader is known. Participants were specifically asked about this guy. He wasn't there.

I can provide more as needed.

[mobuto]

42. As for being a con artist

Millions of Dollars are lost – Ben-Menashe involved
Ari Ben-Menashe, the man at the centre of Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's treason case, has been ordered to repay millions of dollars to the Zambian goverment in a maize deal gone wrong, the Financial Gazette reported. However, the Zambian government is unlikely to see the US $6 million plus interest the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) ordered repaid after as Ben-Menashe's Carlington Sales Company, which was contracted to supply 50.000 mt of maize in the late 90's, has been liquidated.

Ben-Menashe's name hit headlines this year when Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Tsvangirai and two others were arrested for allegedly plotting to kill President Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai met Ben-Menashe with a view to hiring his public relations company Dickens and Madson to improve the MDC's image abroad. He was then secretly filmed saying he wanted to "eliminate" Mugabe, leading to the treason charges.

The Financial Gazette reported that the 50.000 mt of maize was never delivered. South African bank Nedcor, acting on behalf of the Zambian government asked the court to get the money back. However, despite the positive judgment, Willem Kruger, Nedcor's head for legal affairs said: "We are unable to effect our rights in terms of the arbitration because Carlington has liquidated itself."


http://www.sadocc.at/news2002/2002-158.shtml

[Just Me]

47. PROOF,...would be good in lieu of your original allegations,....

,...all I see in your posts are "purportedly", "allegedly", "charges", etc.

If you wanna find REAL conspiracy at work (with their corporate magic tricks and liquidations and abusing national resources),...look to that country in which you live.

[mobuto]

48. Huh?

You've completely lost me.

[Just Me]

51. I am asking a simple thing,...

,...post "PROOF",...something more than surmise, conjecture, allegation, rumor, happenstance, hearsay, etc. etc. etc.

Anything written or recorded would be a very good start.

[AP]

53. Furthermore, some of the sources discrediting the guy might have

motivation for discrediting him: big US media, and Isreal media.

[The Stranger]

52. Even a wrong clock is right twice a day . . .

You provide what appear to be references to various journals calling him a liar (as if this substantiates the original claim). Unfortuantely we don't have any of these on line, except for what appears to be a South African document. Anything more recent?

Perhaps more to the point, why do you keep a file on this individual? This, in itself, is interesting. Clearly, you do not contend now that he has never told the truth. Certainly, even you would not contend (at least not credibly) that a "professional liar" never told the truth about anything.

Which leads me to believe that he told the truth about something or some group of things that you didn't like.

Now, to find out what that was . . .

[w4rma]

13. Never take anything for granted. (n/t)

[Just Me]

40. BWAHAHAHA,...

Why stop there? Why not say that there is no such thing as politico-corporatist terrorism,...which has been going on for like,....can you imagine (Hitler and Mussolini, the extremists among so many unnamed other supporters who happen to include familial ties to current leaderships),...ever and ever, and even pervasive throughout,...the entire history of this continent which has yet to reach fruition as a "democracy". *LOL*

[demdave]

12. More P.O.S. than human.

n/t

[tom_paine]

20. Usually I am on board with your speculations, but not this time

Though I would like a link to see your source for myself.

Maybe it happened like that, but I would have some strong doubts about it.

[Minstrel Boy]

23. I'm not sure I'm on board myself.

I'm just supposin'.

A quote from Menashe's book, Profits of War:

"Radi (a Jordanian military officer who was unaware that he, since some time had already been smuggling arms for the Israeli secret service) went back to his drinking and womanizing and the money he made selling arms for Pearson all drained away. At that very vulnerable point, in 1978, Pearson stepped in again and offered Radi a £200,000 loan. This time, Pearson made it quite clear to him that the money was coming from an Israeli source. The desperate Radi accepted the loan and was recruited to work for an antiterrorist group in Israel run by Rafi Eitan. The group's methods were rather unconventional, one could say heinous, but it had operated successfully for years. An example is the case of the "Palestinian" attack on the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. That was in fact, an Israeli "black" propaganda operation to show what a deadly, cutthroat bunch the Palestinians were. The operation worked like this: Eitan passed instructions to Radi that it was time for the Palestinians to make an attack and do something cruel, though no specifics were laid out. Radi passed orders on to Abu'l Abbas, who, to follow such orders, was receiving millions from Israeli intelligence officers posing as Sicilian dons. Abbas then gathered a team to attack the cruise ship. The team was told to make it bad, to show the world what lay in store for other unsuspecting citizens if Palestinian demands were not met. As the world knows, the group picked on an elderly American Jewish man in a wheelchair, killed him, and threw his body overboard. They made their point. But for Israel it was the best kind of anti-Palestinian propaganda."

And from "Types of Terrorism and 9/11" by George Pumphrey:

The international crisis created by the hijacking was designed to capture headlines of the world's press for about a week. The hijackers finally agreed to surrender to Egyptian authorities. (Abu Abbas, who himself was not among the hijackers, helped negotiate their surrender.) The German Sueddeutsche Zeitung, recently furnished additional information of what happened:

...

"The prosecution indicted the actual hijackers but Abu Abbas was called merely as a "witness" and permitted to flee the country. The US had made a demand for Abbas' extradition for murder of a US citizen. An Italian court convicted Abbas in absentia to five life terms. The US withdrew its extradition demand. And Abbas remained free.

"In 1998 Abu Abbas was given official permission of the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanjahu to visit the Gaza Strip. Israeli authorities justified the official permission with the fact that Abbas had in 1996 already been allowed to visit the Gaza Strip to participate in Palestinian parliamentary elections. He had also voted at that time for the resolution legally eliminating the clause from the PLO Charter calling for the destruction of Israel. Israeli Supreme Court also protected Abbas by refusing the law suit calling for Abbas' expulsion from Israel and being turned over to the US brought by the Klinghoffer family."

The leader who had planned and organized the hijacking was sitting in safety and on the enemy payroll. Those who carried out the action believed they were "helping the cause". They had no idea that the murder of an innocent, invalid reduced their "cause" in the public's eye from a struggle against occupation and ethnic cleansing to one against Jews per se, from a struggle for justice for the Palestinians to an unjust "anti-Jewish" struggle. It would take the Palestinian struggle a long time to overcome this setback.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/PUM306A.html

[tom_paine]

25. Thanks. I'll check it out.

[Kagemusha]

10. Ah, he died *again*?

Will he stay dead this time?

[underpants]

15. Is he like "Chemical Ali"? Dying before we capture him?

I remember Rummy gloriously announcing the death of Ali two months before he gloriously announced that we had captured him, did Abbas defy physics too?

[FatSlob]

28. Have fun in hell.

I'm thrilled to hear of his passing. May his terrorist brothers join him soon. I'm sure they'll be thrilled to learn that no virgins are waiting for them.

[matcom]

30. think he'll save seats for the Bush Crime Family?

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

32. I don't know if they'll end up down there.

I know the Devil knows how greedy they are. They might have a coup and take over his throne.

[FatSlob]

33. Nope, they're not terrorists,

many think they're corrupt (I just think stupid), but definitely not terrorists.

[matcom]

34. no? you sure?

ask the Iraqi's
ask the Haitians
ask the Venezuelans


oh and why exactly DID they fly the Bin Ladens out of this country after 9/11?

please define a terrorist for me and then educate me on the difference between the two fundamentalist camps i am comparing.

thank you.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

38. Hey, one man's terrorist organization is another man's "administration".

[FatSlob]

43. Well, I'll make a stab at it.

The majority of Iraqis are happy Saddam is gone. Yes, I am about the only Democrat who agrees with the war in Iraq. Everybody, including President Clinton, Sec. Albright, Senators Kerry, Clinton, Edwards, everybody thought they had WMD. I don't think there was a conspiracy, I think freeing the Iraqis and setting up a Democracy is the right thing to do. That being said, I do not agree with the handling of events post war. I also still plan on opposing the shrub.
I am not familiar enough with Haiti to form an opinion.
I am not familiar enough with Venezuela, except to say that the only Venezuelan I know hasn't commented on the US having anythingn to do with it. Please, feel free to post links to enlighten me further, I would appreciate them.

As far as the bin Ladens go, I believe that only one is a terrorist. From what I gather, he has been disowned by the rest of the family. That being said, I consider Saudi Arabia to be a terrorist haven.

As far defining a terrorist, he is one who is an agitator, insurgent, insurrectionist, mutineer, nihilist, a radical who employs terror as a political weapon. I do not believe that the government of the United States is terroristic. It may be wrong on many fronts, but the leveled charges of terrorism against the government of the United States are absurd. Now, if anybody has other evidence that I may not be aware of, please post links to it, so that I may read up and decide for myself.

[daleo]

45. A terrorist kills someone you like

A hero kills someone you don't like. At least, that seems to be most people's (and the press's) operational definition.

[FatSlob]

50. You know, there is a bit of truth to that,

not completely accurate, but it does illustrate our own biases.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

37. Will killers or gangsters do? Although "terrorists" fits them all so well.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

58. How many innocent Iraqis and Afghanis have died because of

Bush's decisions and actions?

More than 3000.

[FatSlob]

63. That begs the questions...

How many were killed or denied liberty by the Taliban? How many were murdered or denied liberty under Hussein? Two sides to everything, you know.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

64. By people people who would have never reached power

if it wasn't for covert and overt US involvement. You're absolutely right. State terrorism as in Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua and El Salvador, just to name a few is no better than individual terrorism. Usually the motivation of state terrorism is money and imperial expansion.

Saddam Hussein was helped by the US because he promised to exterminate every communist in Iraq. The Taliban was courted for years by US oil companies, in order to get a Unical pipeline across their territory. These are not "conspiracies" my friend. The word "conspiracy" implies secrecy. This shit is way out in the open. The problem is that people choose to ignore it because the truth hurts.

As fart as those happy Iraqis go. Sure Hussein was a piece of shit. He was once OUR piece of shit. The funny thing is that more and more I hear or read about people saying that at least under Hussein they had electricity, order and were not on the verge of civil war. The problem with your argument is that you also seem to think that hatred for Hussein equals love for the occupying forces. Wrong these people hates us because of sanctions and all the abuses committed during the war.

[FatSlob]

65. I agree with many of your points.

In the past, the govenment of the United States has supported scum. Just because they supported them in the past, doesn't mean it is wrong to take them out now. Hussein was much more than a "piece of shit", he murdered untold numbers of people. The Iraqis are much better off. They may not have all the lights they had before, but they don't have to worry about Saddam's death squads. Sure they have to worry about ex-Baathists and terrorists imported from elsewhere, but they have a freedom that they have never had. It will continue to get better there. I don't think the current administration is doing the best job there, I think others could do better, but Iraq is on the road to liberty.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

66. This is like saying

it's OK for me to give you cancer and then offer you some chemotherapy to make you feel better. We are not just talking about the past. What makes you think this country has the right to invade others and kill many of them because their leader (installed by us in the first place) has gotten on our shit list.

It is ridiculous to think "they supported them in the past". We are supporting "scum" right now. Within a few years we will be saying the same shit about how now we have clean up once more. Don't believe me? Look at Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the former Soviet Republics. Our "friends" now. Then they'll be tomorrows' Frankensteins. When is this shit gonna end? I suggest to you that repeating corporate media propaganda such as "ex-Baathists and terrorists imported from elsewhere" is does nothing to help your arguments. These are State Department talking points. Much like "the light at the end of the tunnel" in Vietnam. If someone invaded your country under false pretenses of helping you out. How willing would you be to help out the invader? Especially when your neighbors will be the first ones to kill you for it.

Let me remind you that your government has also killed untold numbers of people. I hope the day doesn't come when we will all have to pay for it.

[FatSlob]

67. I suppose you would have us be isolationist?

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

68. I suppose you would have us screw any country we wish

so that then we can interfere as we wish as a result? The things we have discussed are facts. Pure and simple. Are you not tired of getting the villain Du juor shoved down our throats every couple of years? If you look back at all our "bad guys" in the past. At one point or another while committing their worst crimes they had our direct or indirect approval, if not complicity. We want terrorism to ens. Simple, let's stop being terrorists, or supporters of when it's financially convenient.

We'll never see eye to eye on this, but I guess variety is what mekes life interesting (to say the least).

[FatSlob]

69. We will agree to disagree,

without being disagreeable. Good talking to you. Hope to catch you around the boards again.

[anarchy1999]

54. Again?!

Anyone confused yet?

[bedtimeforbonzo]

56. Again?

Maybe you are thinking of Abu Nadal. He was the one Iraqi security found dead. Apparently he shot himself in the back of the head 4 times.

[Just Me]

70. Mohammad Atta,...

,...was the one they fauxly asserted as proving a link between Saddam and 9/11.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

72. I bet you could prove a much better link between Atta and...

...the U. S. military.

[JoeKSimmons]

60. Did Ramsey Clark defend Abu Abbas at trial?

I seem to recall Clark defended several big time terrorists. What was up with that?

[mobuto]

61. I don't think so.

But what is up is that Ramsey Clark is completely and utterly insane. He's defended war criminals in Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia, among others. I'm not sure what happened to him right after he left the LBJ Administration, but whatever it was, it wasn't good.

[JoeKSimmons]

71. Clark did defend the terrorists of the Achille Lauro

Clark represented PLO leaders in a suit brought by the family of Leon Klinghoffer, the elderly tourist who was shot and thrown overboard from the hijacked Achille Lauro cruise-ship by renegade Palestinian terrorists in 1986.

[Gimel]

62. Next...

Saddam dies in custody in Iraq.