After 11-Year Effort, U.S. Arraigns Suspect in ’82 Blast

Ending a frustrating 11-year pursuit, the United States arraigned a suspected Palestinian terrorist Wednesday on charges related to the 1982 midair bombing of a Pan Am flight from Tokyo to Honolulu.

Mohammed Rashid was turned over by the government of Egypt after months of intensive intelligence work that traced his movements from Greece through North Africa, U.S. officials confirmed.

U.S. authorities have been tracking Rashid since he was named in a secret indictment in 1987. The high-profile case has involved the personal intervention of the last three American presidents.

The nine-count indictment charges Rashid with murder, bombing, sabotage and other crimes in connection with the Pan Am explosion, which killed a Japanese teenager and injured 15 other passengers. Rashid could face a life sentence if convicted, Justice Department spokesman John Russell said.

U.S. officials say that Rashid, 51, was affiliated with the Arab Organization of May 15, an Iraqi-based Palestinian extremist group linked to other attempted bombings of U.S. and Israeli airliners. Besides the 1982 incident, he is suspected of having played a lead role in the 1986 midair bombing of a TWA flight from Rome to Athens, which killed four Americans.

At a 20-minute hearing in Washington, Rashid at first denied that he was the individual named in the indictment. Speaking through an interpreter, he then said that he had been convicted and served time on the same charges in another country.

Rashid, who had arrived at Dulles International Airport outside the capital only hours earlier, finally entered a plea of not guilty. A detention hearing was set for Friday. Rashid told the court that he was born in Palestine but has been a “vagabond”’ traveling in several Arab states since he left his native land in 1948.

Also named in the charges Wednesday was Christine Pinter, an alleged accomplice who operated under the alias Fatima. Her location was not immediately available.

Justice Department and counter-terrorism officials declined to discuss the events that led to Rashid’s apprehension or to identify the foreign government that assisted them. But officials close to the case said that Rashid’s arrest was a success for U.S. intelligence and diplomacy.

“It does show that there’s no place to hide when you become an object of an international manhunt and are wanted by U.S. law enforcement for a long time,” said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counter-terrorism official who worked closely on the case.

Rashid’s arrest follows a decade of near-misses and diplomatic frustrations.

The United States struggled for years to extradite him from Greece, where he was apprehended in 1988 on false passport charges after U.S. intelligence officials tipped off Greek authorities about his location and officially sought his arrest.

Greece repeatedly turned down U.S. extradition requests. It tried Rashid in 1992 for the Pan Am bombing, acting under the 1971 Montreal Convention, which permits suspects charged with terrorism to be tried in the country where they were arrested. He was convicted and sentenced to 18 years.

The Clinton administration condemned Greece’s decision in 1996 to release Rashid after he had served only four years in prison. The State Department described the early parole as “incomprehensible” and “extraordinary,” noting that Rashid was the ringleader of a prison riot and that his cell was once found full of contraband and weapons.

U.S. officials say that Rashid’s preferred modus operandi was to place a bomb of nitroglycerin or dynamite beneath a passenger seat cushion. The Pan Am jumbo jet was 140 miles from the Honolulu airport when the explosion occurred.