A Craven Lack of Cooperation : Saudis let a known international terrorist get away

U.S. efforts to deter and punish international terrorism were significantly undercut this month when a suspect secretly indicted 10 years ago for crimes arising from the hijacking of a TWA airliner was allowed to escape apprehension. Credit a craven lack of cooperation from Saudi Arabia for that setback.

The suspect, Imad Mughniyah, is a Lebanese who in the 1980s was head of security for Islamic Jihad, the anti-Western terrorist group. Intelligence agencies identify Mughniyah as the man in charge of the 39 American hostages seized in the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, bound from Athens to Rome. An American sailor aboard that flight, Robert Dean Stethem, was mercilessly beaten by his captors before being shot to death.

Mughniyah is also believed to have planned the 1983 suicide truck-bomb attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. That atrocity killed 241 servicemen who had been sent to Lebanon as a peacekeeping force. He has also been linked to the earlier seizure of American hostages in Lebanon. In all, Mughniyah has earned a place at the apex of Washington’s list of most-wanted terrorists.

The decade-long search for this terrorist paid off a few weeks ago when Mughniyah was spotted at an Islamic conference in Sudan. Learning that the flight taking him back to Beirut would have a stopover in Saudi Arabia, U.S. officials asked the Saudi government to detain him until the FBI could take him into custody. Instead the Saudis chose to deny the plane permission to land on their territory, thus freeing themselves from any responsibility in Mughniyah’s capture. Washington issued a protest; no doubt its effect on Saudi behavior in any similar incident in the future will be approximately zero.

Only one thing can explain the Saudi refusal to cooperate--cold fear of provoking the wrath of the same Islamic extremists whose subsidization by some Saudi businessmen and foundations the government refuses to halt. Given a choice between aiding their ally and the cause of global justice or appeasing terrorism, the Saudis didn’t hesitate. That the terrorist Mughniyah remains free is a scandal and itself very close to a crime.