Arab Hijacker’s Trial to Pose Test of U.S. Terrorism Policy

When he first came to world attention via videotape on June 11, 1985, Fawaz Younis personified the militant Middle Eastern hijacker.

The bearded young Lebanese Muslim, dressed in khakis and heavily armed, had just participated in the hijacking of a Royal Jordanian Airline passenger jet. He read a statement demanding that all Palestinians, who were then engaged in fierce military clashes with his Shiite faction in Lebanon, be forced to leave the country.

The hijackers subsequently blew up the plane, without its passengers, on the ground in Beirut. The FBI eventually captured Younis on the high seas in an elaborate operation.

Younis will command international notice once more when his trial on hijacking charges opens here on Tuesday.

As the first alleged foreign terrorist apprehended abroad by U.S. authorities, Younis illustrates a new and aggressive “long-arm” approach to bringing such malefactors to justice. Unlike others who have hijacked aircraft with Americans aboard and have evaded the efforts of U.S. officials to get them to court, Younis is being tried.

Now, however, clean-shaven and dressed in the simple garb that his court-appointed attorney bought for him, Younis looks more like the former used-car salesman and father of two young sons that he also is.

The contrast is at the heart of the case. Was Younis a significant international terrorist, as U.S. prosecutors will try to portray him? Or, as the defense will plead, was he a victim of the anarchic Lebanese system, just one of thousands of young men taking what they regard as lawful orders from warlords engaged in political and sectarian strife?

U.S. counterterrorism policy could be influenced by the answer. Younis’ trial is the most important test yet of the nation’s attempt to apply law and order to international terrorism.

The case, said Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, has “a great deal of symbolic importance” because it marks the first U.S. attempt to implement recent laws claiming jurisdiction over terrorist acts overseas involving Americans.

Could Reverse Conceptions

The outcome of the case also could help reverse perceptions of a weak, compromised American policy on terrorism.

“The arrest and trial of the alleged Lebanese terrorist Fawaz Younis demonstrates our firm commitment to use the rule of law against criminals who call themselves freedom fighters,” L. Paul Bremer III, head of the State Department’s counterterrorism office, said.

At stake in Younis’ trial is the effectiveness of two laws enacted in 1984 and 1986 to deal with terrorism. The laws gave the United States extraterritorial jurisdiction over terrorists acting against U.S. nationals and property outside the United States.

He is charged with six crimes associated with the 30-hour hijacking of the Royal Jordanian airliner from Beirut to Cyprus, Tunisia and Italy, and then back to Tunisia and finally back to Beirut. The counts are conspiracy to hijack a plane, holding Americans hostage, air piracy and three charges involving treatment of the passengers and aircraft.

The trial, which is expected to last four to six weeks, is already attracting controversy.

‘Second-Tier Hijacker’

“Younis is in all likelihood absolutely unimportant,” Robert Kupperman, a terrorism specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said here. “At best, he is a second-tier hijacker.

“But we caught him, and we’re going to have a show trial. We’re going to use counterterrorism theater as terrorism policy. We’re kidding ourselves if we think we can solve the basic problems posed by international terrorism at show trials.”

U.S. officials have conceded that Younis is low in the terrorist hierarchy. “He’s not a big gun in the Shiite world,” one source close to the case said. “He was pretty much a street gunslinger.”

May Think Twice

But that does not make his case unimportant, this source said. “There are other street gunslingers who have been involved in incidents like this,” he said, “and if bad things happen to Fawaz, maybe people like this will think twice about involving themselves in operations which can be seen as risk-taking.”

Controversy also centers on Younis’ capture, which was engineered by U.S. personnel from the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and State Department. The FBI officials later sent then-President Ronald Reagan the unit’s special T-shirt “as a symbol of their pride in being a part of this presidentially approved operation.”

“Thank you for giving us the opportunity to strike a blow against international terrorism,” Oliver B. Revell, FBI executive assistant director for investigations, said in a letter to Reagan that was delivered by then-Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III.

U.S. authorities arrested Younis in September, 1987, aboard the luxury yacht Skunk Kilo, which was in international waters off Cyprus. A Lebanese informant, Jamal Hamdan, had escorted Younis to the ship on the pretext of setting him up in an illicit drug deal.

Hamdan has been convicted of crimes that U.S. officials concede are at least as heinous as those allegedly committed by Younis, although none involved Americans or constituted terrorism.

Hamdan had escaped from a Lebanese prison, where he faced the death sentence, after being convicted of murdering his sister-in-law. He had also jumped bail after being charged in Poland with attempted murder. And he was associated with an extortion ring in Beirut, investigators say.

To win his assistance in entrapping Younis, U.S. authorities promised to bring Hamdan and at least a dozen of his relatives to the United States under the U.S. government’s witness protection program. Hamdan and his relatives, along with several other witnesses and their relatives involved in prosecuting Younis, are now in hiding in the United States.

Not Expected to Testify

Hamdan is not expected to testify at the trial.

“The government has not given a reason,” said Frank Carter, the court-appointed defense attorney. “If I had to guess, it would be one of two reasons. One, the scumminess of his personality is to such a depth that it would completely imbalance the government’s attempt to show that my client is a very dangerous and bad human being.”

Carter added that he had insisted that U.S. District Judge Barrington Parker order the government to provide details of any assistance it had ever given to Hamdan.

“As soon as I was able to get that order from Parker, the government issued a notice that he would not be a witness and asked to be released of that section,” Carter said. “I think that those persons in charge of him, previously and currently, do not want anyone to know the extent of assistance this man has received.”

Asked about Hamdan’s questionable background, a leading U.S. official close to the case responded: “So? In the universe of sleazy people, Hamdan is certainly one of them, but there are others like him that we’ve had to deal with before.”

That Younis participated in the hijacking is not in question. His involvement is established by the videotape of him reading the hijackers’ demands, and he confessed his role during four days of interrogation.

Younis also told the FBI that he had guarded some hostages in the more infamous hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985. But prosecutors decided not to charge him for his lesser role in that incident after some passengers failed to identify him in a lineup.

The defense’s case will center on proving that Younis was following orders from higher-ups. But Carter acknowledged that the defense will have a difficult time disproving that the incident was “so heinous that anyone would know it was unlawful.”

“The biggest difficulty that I will have is to make sure they (the jury) understand that he is not from Iran and that he was not out to kill all Americans,” Carter said.

He also hopes to establish that, since the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon in 1975, all major political parties there have established their own militias. “They are in fact the law in neighborhoods where they patrol,” he said.

“They should understand that when he says he’s part of a militia, he’s not part of a Hell’s Angels or part of a Los Angeles street gang that grabs up Uzis and guns and goes and does whatever it wants. This is part of a legitimate organization recognized by a party that is in turn recognized by the country and the populace.”