Hijackers May Have Hoped to Negotiate for Jailed Comrades

The hijackers who commandeered the Pan American World Airways jetliner in Karachi on Friday apparently had hoped to obtain the release of comrades held in Cypriot prisons.

Cyprus authorities said the government has received no precise account of the hijackers’ demands. But news accounts from Karachi said the hijackers told Pakistani officials and passengers they were seeking the release of unnamed “friends” from jails in Cyprus.

Authorities here speculated that the hijackers may have been seeking the freedom of a British citizen and two Palestinians who were imprisoned for life for the murder of three Israelis in the Larnaca marina last Sept. 25.

The three men--Briton Ian Michael Davison, Khaled Abdul Kader Khatib of Syria and Abdul Hakim Saado Khalifa of Jordan--are followers of Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Members of the PLO’s elite Force 17, the three said they crept on board the Israelis’ boat at the marina and murdered them because they had a “moral duty” to kill Israeli intelligence officers.

First Since Achille Lauro

If Arafat loyalists are behind the Karachi hijacking, it would represent the first known official PLO involvement in a terrorist incident outside Israel since the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked last October. That action was led by followers of Abul Abbas, a member of the PLO executive committee, but Arafat has insisted that he was unaware of the plan before it occurred.

In addition to the Arafat followers, the authorities are also holding a Lebanese man, Amin Suleiman Zarour, 25, who was arrested Aug. 14 with a suitcase containing 18 hand grenades, a pistol and a silencer. At the time of his arrest, there was speculation here that the Lebanese was a member of the pro-Iranian Shia Muslim group, Hezbollah (Party of God).

After the takeover of the aircraft in Karachi, two groups in the Middle East claimed responsibility for the hijacking.

An anonymous telephone caller told a Western news agency in Nicosia, the Cypriot capital, that a previously unknown organization called the Libyan Revolutionary Cells was responsible for the takeover.

The caller, who spoke Arabic with a North African accent, said the hijacking had been carried out “because there are U.S. intelligence agents on board upon whom our fighters will pass the death sentence.”

Denials From Tripoli

Shortly after the statement was released, state-controlled Radio Tripoli denied that the Libyan government was involved in the hijacking. “We in Libya affirm that we have no connection whatsoever with what has happened and express surprise at such a method to involve Libya,” said the statement released in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. Libya is “against terrorism and is a primary victim of it.”

In Beirut, the radical group Jundullah or “Soldiers of God”--which has been variously described as an offshoot of Hezbollah or a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim force armed and financed by the PLO--delivered a typewritten statement to the officers of the newspaper An Nahar claiming responsibility for the hijacking.

The statement said the hijacking was carried out “with great success and according to the premeditated plan” by members of the “Martyr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Squad.” Bhutto, the late Pakistani prime minister, was overthrown and executed by the government of President Zia ul-Haq.

CIA, Mossad Targeted

The Jundullah statement said the hijackers had targeted U.S. Army officers and agents of the CIA aboard the plane and claimed there were also agents of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad aboard.

“We wish to stress that we are not targeting American citizens or the American people, but we are after repressive tools recruited by the Administration of the Great Satan, especially President Reagan’s government,” the statement said. The Iranian government and radical Islamic groups frequently refer to the Reagan Administration as the Great Satan.

Jundullah has long been active in Beirut and in Lebanon’s two other major cities, Tripoli and Sidon.

The Beirut statement accused the Reagan Administration of “violating all human values and consecrating state terrorism in the full sense of the word.”

Tribute to Daughter

The statement also denounced Zia for his “ties with the policy of international arrogance” and paid tribute to Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir, calling her the leader of the “restoration of democracy movement” in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto has been jailed since last month in Karachi for violating a government order against public demonstrations.

Neither claim of responsibility could be independently confirmed, but experts here tended to discount the suggestion that Libya could be behind the incident. In the past, Libyans have never made such claims and to do so now would represent a severe threat to the regime in Tripoli.

The Reagan Administration warned last week that it believed that the Libyan government would launch new terrorist acts against American interests and suggested those attacks would be met with force. U.S. warplanes bombed the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi in April following a bomb explosion at a discotheque frequented by American servicemen in West Berlin.

No Permission to Land

The government of Cyprus said in a statement released before the takeover ended in a bloody exchange of gunfire between the hijackers and Pakistani commandos that it would refuse “under any circumstances” to allow the hijacked jetliner to land here.

A government statement said extra security precautions were being taken around Larnaca Airport to enforce the decision. But the airport appeared relaxed, with only a single armored personnel carrier on the airport apron and no visible deployment of troops.

A report from Zimbabwe, where Cypriot President Spyros Kyprianou was attending the summit conference of the Nonaligned movement, said that Zia, the Pakistani leader, had met with the Cypriot president and agreed to attempt to end the hijacking without giving in “to international terrorism.”