Paris Reportedly Ignored U.S. Request to Hold Hijacking Suspect

France failed to act on a U.S. request to arrest a Lebanese Shia Muslim accused of masterminding the hijacking of a Trans World Airlines flight to Beirut last June that resulted in the murder of a U.S. serviceman, Justice Department sources said Friday.

They said France was asked to detain and prosecute the terrorist suspect, Imad Mughniyah, late last year after U.S. intelligence officials learned that he was planning to enter France.

The sources said French agents saw the suspect, a member of a radical Palestinian group, but did not arrest him. His current whereabouts are unknown.

The sources were unable to say why the French failed to act, but the New York Times on Friday quoted Reagan Administration officials as saying the decision not to make the arrest was probably based on France’s continuing diplomatic efforts to gain the release of four French hostages in Lebanon.

A grand jury in Washington has indicted three Lebanese Shias thought to be responsible for the 16-day hijacking of TWA Flight 847, during which 39 hostages were held and a U.S. Navy diver, Robert Dean Stethem, was murdered.

Arrest warrants and criminal complaints were issued for the three accused hijackers, identified in court documents as Mohammed Hamade, Ali Atweh and Hassan Izzaldin.

But Friday’s disclosures about the request to France was the first time that U.S. authorities have acknowledged learning the identity of the person alleged to have planned and directed the hijacking.

The sources described Mughniyah as an associate of Abu Nidal, a radical Palestinian leader accused by Washington of masterminding the attacks last December on the Rome and Vienna airports in which 16 travelers, including five Americans, were killed.

The New York Times reported that Mughniyah was implicated in the bombings in 1983 of the French and American barracks in Beirut that left 241 U.S. servicemen and 58 French dead.