Lebanon Prosecutor Orders TWA Hijacker Investigation

A Lebanese state prosecutor announced Monday that he has ordered a judicial investigation to identify, arrest and formally charge the hijackers of a TWA jetliner, and he said the killer of an American passenger could face a death sentence.

Maurice Khawam, chief prosecutor of the district that includes Beirut International Airport, said he does not know the identities of the Shia Muslim gunmen who seized the plane after takeoff from Athens on June 14, forced it to Beirut and held 39 Americans hostage until June 30.

Beirut state radio on Friday named three men that it said were the hijackers and said that Lebanese officials would attempt to prosecute them. But the three names announced--Ali Atweh, Ali Younis and Ahmed Gharbieh--were apparently from forged passports, Khawam said Monday.

Nonetheless, Khawam said he instructed the district’s chief judge to institute an inquiry and a prosecution on charges of murder, hijacking and smuggling weapons aboard the plane.

Police sources said the gunman who killed U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem--if arrested and put on trial--could be sentenced to death. The other hijackers, perhaps a dozen in all including those who boarded the plane in Beirut--could get 10 years at hard labor.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber in a car bearing a Red Cross flag blew up a checkpoint and nearby bakery in Israel’s southern Lebanon security zone Monday, killing himself, seven civilians and two members of the Israeli-sponsored South Lebanon Army, Israel radio and military sources reported. It was the third such attack in a week.

Lebanon’s state television later broadcast a videotaped farewell message by a man identified as the suicide driver, Hisham Abbass, 20, a member of a Lebanese group allied with Syria.

In Beirut, the government said that 300 Muslim members of the Lebanese army will impose a Syrian-sponsored security plan this morning, expelling militias from Muslim West Beirut.