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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran | |
| Achille Lauro hijacker at Lebanon's Nahr al-Bared camp | |
| 2007-05-28 | |
| A Palestinian who escaped from Italy while on parole for the 1985 hijacking of cruise ship Achille Lauro is holed up in the Lebanon refugee camp where the army is besieging Islamist militants. Bassam al-Ashker, now 39, told reporters by telephone that he is now a militiaman for the mainstream Fatah faction of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and saw it as his duty to brave the fighting to help the thousands of trapped civilians. Ashker was just 17 when he took part in the assault on the Achille Lauro by commandos of the Palestine Liberation Front of Abu Abbas in which some 450 passengers were held hostage for several days and a wheelchair-bound U.S. tourist was killed. He told reporters he had retained his radical anti-Western politics and,
Despite his anti-Western views, Ashker insisted he had no link with the Islamist fighters of fringe militant group Fatah al-Islam who are under siege by the Lebanese army and stand accused of using camp residents as human shields. "They have certainly proved their military prowess," he said referring to the fighting of the past week in which 33 Lebanese soldiers but only 25 of the group's fighters were among the 78 dead. "If they had used it to fight Israel, I would have been the first to join them, but they are fanatics who believe only in religion and have no regard of the consequences of their actions on civilians. Not a long time ago, Muslim clerics reminded them that it was wrong to attack Palestinians or Lebanese but they retorted that their religion took primacy over everything else." Despite his disdain for the Fatah al-Islam fighters, Ashker insisted he had no intention of leaving the Nahr al-Bared camp, where living conditions have been deteriorating amid chronic shortages of water, food and power. "It is shameful for a young man to leave the camp -- we need all the help we can get. My men are organizing food and drink for trapped civilians, notably by going up on the rooftops to get water from the cisterns there, which is dangerous because of sniper fire. We're also organizing patrols to prevent burglaries from the homes of residents who have fled." | |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #7 If this fucker doesn't get smothered with a ham sandwich, there is no justice. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2007-05-28 22:13 |
| #6 A useful analysis, mrp. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-05-28 20:54 |
| #5 PLF Commando, jeez, the destruction of the language continues. Pretty damn sophisticated even then. Meanwhile US Administration Extremists souoght to undermine the Italian justice system. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2007-05-28 18:57 |
| #4 I really, really do wish the US still had a couple of commissioned battleships. Replace those heavy, cumbersome turrets with GMLRS launchers, stand offshore, and start lobbing in missiles. When there's nothing left standing, napalm the rubble and bake it into a solid mass of twisted iron, crushed rock, and ash. When Iran and Syria make threatening noise, run a few nuke strikes through the heart of their "empires", and let them take care of themselves afterwards. We need to do the Mongols one better, and totally CRUSH for all time the entire muzzie world. We could all live a little easier afterwards. Oh, and we can then go in and steal all the oil we want or need, kicking the Russians and Chinese in the teeth as we do so. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2007-05-28 14:35 |
| #3 Send Billy Waugh after him. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2007-05-28 13:36 |
| #2 A couple of points: 1) Excerpts: Bassam al-Ashker, now 39, told reporters by telephone that he is now a militiaman for the mainstream Fatah faction of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas AND: "I organize the training of young Palestinian recruits who we send to fight the Americans alongside the Iraqi resistance," Ashker told reporters. "I have even fought them myself in Fallujah and Ramadi," two rebel bastions west of Baghdad. The conclusions I draw from this: a) Every nickel "donated" to Fatah and Abbas funds the murder of American servicemen, Iraqi military and civil authorities, and Iraqi citizens. b) Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon are terrorist training sites. c) Palestinian recruits and their instructor cadres are transiting somehow from Lebanon to Iraq. Syria has long been accused of allowing such access. And Syria is Persian satellite. 2) The original source for the Naharnet article is the Agence France Press (AFP). I don't recall this kind of detailed reporting involving a Fatah-related subject prior to Sarkozy's election. Come to think of it, the attack on the Nahr al-Bared camp took place shortly after his election, didn't it? |
| Posted by: mrp 2007-05-28 09:53 |
| #1 Unless this brave lion of islam suddenly gets dead, we should try to obtain Bassam al-Ashker from the Lebanonese, send him to Gitmo or have him have his day in court for the murder of Leon Klinghoffer in the U.S.--just to let terrorists know that we do not forget. Of course we could arrange to just kill him in Lebanon. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2007-05-28 09:24 |