Word: mubarak
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Already the postmortems were under way in Malta, Cairo and various Western capitals. Malta's Prime Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici defended his country's long-standing policy of refusing to refuel a hijacked plane unless terrorists first released all passengers aboard. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak accused the hijackers of being members of a Palestinian terrorist group opposed to Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and closely aligned with Mubarak's enemy, Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi. Though Mubarak did not mention the group by name, he seemed to be referring to the Abu Nidal faction, which has previously taken responsibility...
...Mubarak had been criticized in October for his seemingly indecisive handling of the hijacking of the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro, in which one passenger was killed. This time he moved briskly, sending a team of 80 specially trained commandos to Malta even as he placed his armed forces on alert and bolstered his defenses along the Libyan border. He authorized the commando operation only after the plane's captain, Hani Galal, told the tower at Valletta: "Please do something. They're going to kill...
...swing, then jumped to safety. In the aftermath of the horror of Flight 648, many questions remained unanswered. Were the terrorists, whose trip was indeed believed to have begun in Tripoli, directly linked to Gaddafi? Were they agents of Abu Nidal, the Palestinian renegade who is bent on undermining Mubarak and other Arab moderates? Had they somehow smuggled their weapons onto the plane in Athens, despite what Greek authorities insisted had been five security checks of passengers boarding Flight 648, or had the weapons been taken onto the plane clandestinely in Cairo earlier...
Despite the outcome, the Egyptians defended their decision to take action when they did. "We were compelled to do the best we could to save those lives," declared Osama el Baz, Mubarak's political adviser. "We had to fight terrorism, and fight it hard." --By William E. Smith. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Valletta and Dean Fischer/Cairo
...Egypt, meanwhile, the case of Policeman Suleiman Khater, 24, caused further embarrassment to the government of President Hosni Mubarak. On Oct. 5, Khater shot and killed seven Israeli tourists in the Sinai, including four children. Khater was convicted by a military court and sentenced to life imprisonment, but last week he was found dead in his room at a prison hospital. An autopsy concluded that he had committed suicide by hanging himself, but after demonstrations broke out on university campuses and in the victim's hometown, a court ordered a further investigation...