U.S. Can Legally Extradite 4 Terrorists, Justice Dept. Says

The United States can legally extradite and try the four Palestinians accused of seizing an Italian cruise ship and murdering an American who was on board, Justice Department officials said Friday.

Under the provisions of a 1984 federal anti-crime statute, U.S. jurisdiction extends to terrorist “hostage-taking” acts against Americans abroad, the department said in a statement.

The law, which makes no reference to murder, calls for a maximum penalty of life imprisonment for anyone who “seizes, or detains, or threatens to kill or to injure” someone to force a third person or government to meet its demands.

‘All Options Preserved’

The question of whether the suspected terrorists will be tried in Italy or the United States--or perhaps in both countries--has yet to be resolved, said Terry Eastland, the Justice Department’s director of public affairs. “At this point, all options are being preserved,” he said.

Eastland noted that the United States and Italy concluded a treaty in September, 1984, that would permit extraditing the suspects to stand trial here. The terrorists were taken into custody in Italy early Friday after U.S. Navy warplanes intercepted the chartered airliner carrying them out of Egypt and forced it to land in Sicily.

“We have advised the Italian government that we will seek extradition and formal steps are now being taken to charge these suspects in the United States in preparation for such a request,” Eastland said.

In addition to charges under the hostage-taking law, other offenses that could be lodged in the case include piracy under international law, as codified in the United States, and conspiracy under federal statutes, Eastland added. The conspiracy reference, another official said, arises partly because two officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization also were aboard the plane bearing the hijackers out of Egypt.

Case Law Authority

Eastland said that the authority for the United States to apprehend the suspects as it did has been established in U.S. case law and in “well-recognized constitutional principles.”

“In this case, the suspects were apprehended while still in immediate flight from their crimes,” he said.

Legal experts said that extradition from Italy to the United States could pose some problems--such as double jeopardy, an established principle of law that bars a defendant’s being put on trial twice for the same offense.

But there seems to be widespread agreement that the United States acted within the law in intercepting the Egyptian plane.

“The United States acted lawfully and in an exemplary fashion,” said Prof. John Norton Moore, an international law specialist at the University of Virginia. “The U.S. has the right to respond with necessary and proportional force to an illegal, aggressive attack--and this response could not have been more careful.”

Anthony A. D’Amato, a law professor at Northwestern University, said that both anti-piracy law and principles established under the Nuremberg war trials could justify the interception. “It would be based on the right of any nation to bring to justice a war criminal--someone who has murdered innocent persons,” he said. The four men are accused of killing Leon Klinghoffer, 69, a wheelchair-bound tourist from New York.

Contrary Opinion

Another authority, Detlev F. Vagts of the Harvard Law School, voiced disagreement with Moore and D’Amato.

“I view us as not having the authority to intercept a foreign-flag airliner over international waters in order to carry out what was basically a law enforcement action,” he said. The U.S. interception was basically “like what Israel did with Adolf Eichmann,” he said, a reference to Israel’s 1960 kidnaping of the notorious Nazi in Argentina.

But Vagts, like other experts, conceded that there appears to be little Egypt could do but protest. “And I think that the Egyptians would like to have this whole thing die out of people’s consciousness,” he said.

The question of extradition--should the United States press for it--could prove more complex. The extradition treaty signed by the United States and Italy last year includes provisions permitting an accused criminal to be extradited for an offense committed beyond the border of the country seeking extradition.

But the treaty also includes sections guarding against double jeopardy and barring extradition when it is sought for commission of a “political offense.”

U.S. Legal Precedents

Nonetheless, legal analysts pointed out that double-jeopardy provisions would not foreclose trials in both the United States and Italy. But both countries would have to observe American legal precedents allowing more than one trial for the same act if the charged offenses are different, such as murder and kidnaping.

Extraditing the hijackers for trial in this country, in Vagts’ view, could involve “an enormous number” of problems. “Because it’s so complicated, it’s possible that some bright criminal lawyer could get these guys off,” he said.

Another provision of the treaty denies extradition when the requesting country has the death penalty but the country holding the accused does not--and, as of now, there is no capital punishment in Italy.

However, that apparently will not be at issue should the United States succeed in any extradition process because the anti-terrorist law on which Washington relies provides only for prison sentences, not capital punishment.