Pirates Believed Unit of Bloody Pro-Syria Group

The Palestinians who seized the cruise ship Achille Lauro appear to be members of a violent pro-Syrian splinter group that once tried to send guerrillas flying into Israel on hang gliders--and now opposes Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat as too moderate.

The terrorists aboard the Italian ship have said that they are members of the Palestine Liberation Front, a guerrilla group with a history of bloody and unorthodox actions.

U.S. officials say they are not yet certain that the terrorists are in fact Palestine Liberation Front members, but they said evidence points in that direction. The terrorists have said they are front members, and the prisoners whose release they have demanded include several Palestinians held by Israel.

Further complicating the picture, the Palestine Liberation Front itself is split into three factions, one pro-Arafat and two anti-Arafat.

Arafat’s headquarters in Tunis disavowed the hijacking Tuesday, calling it “contradictory to the methods of struggle” of the PLO. U.S. officials and other experts on the tangled Palestinian guerrilla factions said that Arafat’s denial appeared credible, at least without further evidence of a link.

“It’s the splinter group of a splinter group,” White House spokesman Larry Speakes said of the Palestine Liberation Front. “Whatever association they have with Arafat, it is not a very close or good association.”

U.S. intelligence officials have been sifting through the hijackers’ statements and comparing notes with Israeli experts in an effort to determine the terrorists’ identity and allegiances.

Some Israeli officials say the man believed in charge of the hijacking is Abul Abbas, who is said to be the operational head of the Palestine Liberation Front.

1979 Raid Recalled

The terrorists have demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Italy, Israel and elsewhere, including Samir Sami Kuntar, a participant in a 1979 Palestinian raid in which an Israeli father and his 5-year old daughter were murdered on an Israeli beach. According to Israeli court testimony, the child’s head was smashed against rocks on the beach.

A senior U.S. official said that the list of prisoners, which the terrorists apparently transmitted by ship-to-shore radio, included other Popular Liberation Front members--but also members of other Palestinian groups. That made it possible that the terrorists are drawn from several groups, he said.

Experts on the PLO said that the timing and nature of the attack--while Arafat is attempting to improve relations with moderate Arab states and to explore the possibility of negotiations with Israel--suggested that the Syrian-based alliance of anti-Arafat factions was behind it.

“There’s a whole clutch of groups in Damascus,” said Rashid Khalidy, a professor at Columbia University’s Middle East Institute. “Which one did this is almost irrelevant.”

He called the Palestine Liberation Front “a particularly unpleasant group.”

Group Formed in 1976

The organization, which has never claimed more than 2,000 members, was formed in 1976 by dissident members of a Libyan-backed guerrilla group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. The PFLP-GC was itself a dissident offshoot of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by Dr. George Habash.

The Popular Front General Command had a reputation for ruthless, well-organized terrorist attacks, and the new Palestine Liberation Front was no different--except that for more than a year, the two factions made war on each other in the streets of Beirut, killing dozens of innocent bystanders until Arafat mediated a truce.

The Palestine Liberation Front then turned to a series of bizarre attempts to fly terrorists into northern Israel--in defiance of Arafat, who was attempting to enforce an informal cease-fire in the area.

On March 7, 1981, a Palestine Liberation Front guerrilla flew a motorized hang-glider from south Lebanon to northern Israel in an attempt to rocket an oil refinery near Haifa. He managed to avoid detection by Israel’s radar, but was captured shortly after he hit the ground.

Hang-Gliding Guerrillas

A second hang-glider guerrilla failed to reach the border and was captured by Israeli-backed militiamen in southern Lebanon.

On April 16, 1981, another Palestine Liberation Front airborne squad took off from southern Lebanon in a hot-air balloon. Israeli troops shot down the balloon and killed the terrorists in a shootout.

After Israel’s June, 1982, invasion of Lebanon, the PLO divided over Arafat’s leadership, with Syria actively supporting a mutiny against the chairman.

Part of the Palestine Liberation Front followed Arafat into exile in Tunisia. A second group joined the pro-Syrian alliance in Damascus. And a third moved to Libya, where it was reportedly funded by Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi.