WASHINGTON, July 6, Reuter: The United States praised Pakistan on Wednesday for sentencing to death five Palestinians who hijacked a Pan Am plane at Karachi airport in 1986 in an incident causing 22 deaths.
“The Pakistani court decision is an important action in bringing the rule of law to bear against terrorists”, State Department spokesman Phyllis Oakley said. “Certainly we are gratified by the decision”.
A Rawalpindi court ruled earlier on Wednesday that the five Palestinians should hang for their role in the September 1986 hijacking in which two Americans were killed.
Oakely said the court decision and the current trial in West Germany of Mohammad Alt Hamadi on charges of seizing a ‘Trans World Airlines plane in 1985 and killing a U.S. navy diver, showed there was progress in the war on hijackings.
So large a part of ordinary statesmanship. The responsibility he really shares is more nearly akin to that of the economist or the lawyer whose province is not to frame a system of convenient application to the exigencies of the day but to investigate truth and to apply it on fixed principles to the affairs of the world”
Article extracted from this publication >> July 15, 1988
