9 Detainees Face Ouster : PLO Unit Has Been Quiet in This Country

With a history punctuated by assassinations, bombings and hijackings, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine clearly established itself more than a decade ago as among the bloodiest factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Now, even though the level of violence associated with the Syrian-based group has declined, it is once again in the spotlight after the arrest Monday in Los Angeles of eight Arab immigrants and a Kenyan for alleged subversive activities involving the PFLP.

Leading experts on international terrorism interviewed by The Times said Thursday, however, that the militant organization has no record of overt terrorism in this country, much less in Southern California.

“The (Popular Front) has not carried out any terrorist operations in the United States that we know of,” said Brian Jenkins, a nationally recognized expert on international terrorism for the Santa Monica-based Rand Corp. “There’s simply no record of PFLP terrorism in this country.”

In fact, said Jenkins, who for 15 years has directed Rand’s research on violence, to the best of his knowledge, “there have been no incidents of terrorist activity carried on by Palestinians of any persuasion in California and, in fact, there have been only a handful of Palestinian terrorist incidents in the U.S. over the last 15 years.”

No Record

Although the Popular Front has no record of violence in this country, undoubtedly some of the thousands of Palestinians living in Southern California sympathize with the group’s political objectives, said experts in terrorism and Middle Eastern politics.

The nine individuals in custody, all of whom deny belonging to the Popular Front, were picked up by immigration agents after a 10-month FBI investigation. All nine--some of whom have lived and worked in Southern California for several years, others who are students--face deportation proceedings next month.

The Popular Front has an active paramilitary force in the Middle East, according to terrorist experts. The Marxist-Leninist group is committed to revolutionary change within the Arab bloc and to the ultimate elimination of Israel.

To this end, the group has as many as 1,000 heavily armed followers led by George Habash, 60, a U.S.-trained doctor and once regarded as one of the hardest of the PLO’s hard-liners. Habash, now believed to be in declining health, founded the group in December, 1967.

Habash’s use of terrorism and political hijackings originally brought him into conflict with Yasser Arafat, the PLO’s more moderate chairman. In recent years, though, Habash has appeared less extremist in his statements and is believed to have met with a senior Arafat aide in Prague last year.

Moreover, Habash’s organization is not known to have made any attacks outside Israel and its occupied territories for years, according to observers in the Mideast.

According to a Rand computer check, PFLP international terrorist actions began on July 22, 1968, when its cadres hijacked an Israeli El Al airliner out of Rome and successfully forced the release of 16 Israeli-held Arabs.

The most recent bloody incident occurred on July 10, 1986, when the group claimed responsibility for attempting to put four of its fighters ashore in Israel in a dinghy just north of the Lebanese border, an incident in which all four terrorists were killed, along with two Israeli soldiers.

But perhaps the Popular Front is best known for the 1976 hijacking of an Air France jetliner on a flight from Tel Aviv to Paris. The plane was forced down in Uganda, and after a siege, the airport terminal was stormed by Israeli commandos. Thirty-one people died, including all of the hijackers.

In the United States, Rand research shows five Palestinian-related terrorist incidents in the 1970s, none of which involved the PFLP.

They began in October, 1972, with a series of letter bombs sent primarily to people active in the American Jewish community; a postal worker was injured but no one was killed. They ended in July, 1977, with the explosion of a bomb at the Rockville, Md., home of the director of a pro-Israel lobbying group. No one was injured in the attack.

In July, 1973, Palestinian terrorists were suspected of murdering Col. Yosef Alon, an Israeli military attache, who was shot outside of his suburban Washington home.

In the United States, the group appears to have become active in its political activities, according to Neil C. Livingston and Robert Kupperman, Washington-based terrorism specialists.

“They have gone active recently,” said Livingston, an author who teaches courses on terrorism at Georgetown University. “All of a sudden, it appears that this group is coming back,” particularly, he said, in California and Michigan.

“But I don’t think you have hard-core (PFLP) bombers here with missions to blow up buildings,” Livingston added.

Reports Circulating

Instead, he said, reports have been circulating that PFLP sympathizers have been active in collecting intelligence, training cadres and collecting cash to finance their international activities.

For instance, he said that intelligence information has been circulating that some PFLP supporters may have run auto insurance scams in efforts to raise funds. There also have been reports in recent years, he said, that Habash’s people have a “safe house” in the Los Angeles area where their overseas activists can seek temporary haven.

Kupperman, a senior adviser for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the Popular Front’s political activity in this country has surged “in the last five or six years . . . (but) I think they are less violent as an organization and more political.”

Kupperman, a former National Security Council consultant during the Nixon Administration, noted that the Popular Front is only one of many foreign-based groups that the FBI has under surveillance in this country.

“I have faith in the FBI. I don’t think they would take action without good reason,” he said, referring to the arrests this week in the Los Angeles area.

Cultural Club

Shibley Telhami, a Middle East specialist at USC, said it is not unusual to find Palestinian activists here and that there is a Palestinian cultural club on the campus.

“Any politically active Palestinian is inevitably going to be associated with one of the Palestinian groups,” he said. “But the mere involvement with politics has nothing to do with terrorism.”

David Lehrer, Los Angeles chief of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, a Jewish anti-discrimination organization, said his group’s information suggests that the Popular Front has been politically active off-campus as well. His reference, he said, was to a fund-raising event in San Diego last February.

Still, he said, he is not convinced that the group has been entirely docile on the terrorist front here.

“Terrorist groups don’t leave calling cards,” he said. “They don’t operate above ground like a mainstream nonprofit group.”

Bail Cut

Meanwhile, U.S. Immigration Judge William J. Martin agreed Thursday to reduce the bail of two of the nine defendants, Ghabah Hawari, 24, and her brother, Haitham Hawari, 19, to $3,000 and $5,000, respectively, from $25,000 each. The two are facing lesser charges than some of their co-defendants--the woman for overstaying her visa; her brother for a violation of his student visa. Their deportation hearing was set for Feb. 3.

The new leader of the legal team representing the nine defendants will be nationally known civil rights attorney Leonard Weinglass. From his limited knowledge of the case at this point, he said in a telephone interview from his New York office:

“The whole matter smacks of retributive justice, which is the worst kind. It’s striking out at innocent people to make a political point, and it’s precisely the kinds of cases I’ve been involved in.”

Contributing to this story was Times staff writer Marita Hernandez.