Greece Sentences Arab Wanted by U.S. : Palestinian Gets 7 Months for Minor Offense; Extradition Pressed

A Greek court Thursday sentenced a Palestinian secret agent to seven months in jail for a minor offense, clearing the way for U.S. attempts to extradite him in the 1982 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner.

Although the Palestinian’s detention originally was believed to have prompted a bloody assault on a Greek cruise ship earlier this week, the trial shed no new light on the indiscriminate attack. There was no report of any progress in the search for the three gunmen, whom police identified as Arab terrorists.

After a 90-minute hearing in a packed, 90-degree courtroom, three judges convicted Mohammed Rashid, 34, of attempting to enter the country about June 1 on a forged Syrian passport in the name of Mohammed Hamdan. They denied bond pending appeal and ordered him to immediately begin serving the seven-month term.

“I was passing through Greece on a secret mission,” the defendant, whose open-necked, peach-colored shirt was splashed with sweat, told the court from within a ring of photographers and heavily armed Greek police.

Speaking through an Arabic-Greek interpreter provided by the Palestine Liberation Organization, he said he was a member of the PLO and its military wing, the Palestine Liberation Army.

A U.S. extradition request on file with the Greek government accuses Rashid of responsibility for the in-flight bombing of the Pan American World Airways jet over Hawaii. A Japanese teen-ager died in the blast, and 15 other passengers were injured.

In Washington on Thursday, State Department spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley urged Greece to begin extradition proceedings “as soon as possible,” wire services reported.

Affidavit From Syria

Lawyers in the Athens courtroom said that Greek law requires Rashid to serve his full sentence but that an appeals court could weigh the extradition request in the meantime. If the petition is approved, Rashid could be extradited to the United States when his sentence ends.

Rashid told Chief Judge Mihalis Margaritis that he had never been in Greece before. He said Mohammed Hamdan is his real name and produced an affidavit from the Syrian Embassy here asserting that the passport is genuine.

A Greek police expert testified, however, that the defendant’s fingerprints are those of Mohammed Rashid, who served three years in jail in Greece from 1973 to 1976 for possession of hashish. Greek newspapers have said that Rashid was arrested on a tip from the U.S. Embassy, and it is thought that American anti-terrorist experts also believe him to be responsible for a bomb that killed four American passengers aboard an Athens-Rome TWA flight in 1986.

Thursday’s trial attracted dozens of international reporters because of speculation that the attack Monday on the tourist-packed City of Poros may have been intended to win hostages to barter for Rashid’s release.

“This is not true,” Rashid snapped, claiming that the ship attack was U.S.-inspired to distract attention from Palestinian unrest against Israel in his native West Bank.

The ship attack, which claimed nine lives, is only the latest in a series of terrorist spectaculars in Greece. It came two weeks after Greek terrorists murdered the military attache at the U.S. Embassy in Athens.

There is still no sign of the killers, no credible claim of responsibility for the massacre or any evidence to explain why the mostly European tourists should have been targeted. The gunmen fired without apparent reason, making no attempt to seize the vessel.