Terrorism Will Not Delay Arab’s Trial, Greeks Say

Warning that it will not be intimidated by international terrorists, the Greek government Wednesday ordered the immediate trial of a self-described Palestinian fighter wanted by the United States for the 1982 bombing of an American airliner.

Mohammed Rashid, 34, will go on trial today amid speculation that terrorists who killed nine foreign tourists on a cruise ship Monday may have been seeking hostages to barter for his release.

If, as expected, Rashid is convicted of attempting to enter Greece on a false passport, it will clear the way for the Greek government to act on a U.S. request for his extradition.

Rashid, calling himself a Palestinian fighter, made a brief court appearance Wednesday under heavy guard. His trial had been scheduled for this week, then was delayed along with hundreds of others by a strike of prison guards.

In obvious response to the cruise ship attack, the minister of justice, Agamemnon Koutsogiorgas, ordered the police to escort Rashid to court. Proceedings were curtailed Wednesday by the lack of an interpreter, but the three-judge court promptly ordered Rashid to return today to stand trial.

Speaking in English with reporters, Rashid denied responsibility for the in-flight bombing in 1982 of a Tokyo-Honolulu Pan Am jet in which one person was killed and 15 others were injured.

“The Americans can say what they like,” he said. “I had nothing to do with it.”

Blames U.S. for Attack

He described the attack on the tourist ship as “an American operation” designed to distract international attention from the downing of an Iranian airliner July 3 by a U.S. cruiser in the Persian Gulf.

Although there is no mention in the extradition petition, it is thought that the United States also suspects Rashid of planting a bomb two years ago on a TWA airliner that exploded on an Athens-Rome flight, killing four people.

Greek sources say the government of Socialist Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou is likely to honor the U.S. request for Rashid’s extradition despite pressure from Greece’s political left.

A nationwide search has failed to turn up any trace of the three gunmen, described by police as Arab terrorists, who fired indiscriminately at the mostly Western European vacationers on board the cruise ship.

Seeking to minimize damage to its important tourist industry, the minister of tourism, Nikos Skoulas, told reporters Wednesday that “terrorism is not a Greek or a European phenomenon but a world phenomenon.”

Competing Claims

Meanwhile, a previously unknown group--The Organization of the Martyrs of the Popular Revolution in Palestine--claimed responsibility for the ship attack. And an anonymous caller to a French radio station said that the pro-Iranian group Islamic Jihad carried out the assault. There was no way to authenticate either claim.