1985 Rome Airport Gunman Implicates Abu Nidal, Syria

The lone surviving gunman of the 1985 airport attack here that killed 16 people has claimed ties with terrorist leader Abu Nidal and that Syria was behind the mission.

In pre-trial testimony read at his trial Monday, 20-year-old gunman Ibrahim Mohammed Khaled said that the orders for the mission came from Damascus, and that Abu Nidal’s Al-Fatah Revolutionary Council was based there.

Khaled also told investigators that he and his three companions, as well as the Palestinian commandos that carried out the simultaneous attack at Vienna’s airport, had left for their missions from Syria.

They had been technically and ideologically trained for weeks and were given $2,500 apiece, air tickets, maps and false passports, the testimony said. He also revealed information about hidden arms caches and organizers of terrorist attacks, including Abu Nidal.

Khaled’s trial opened Dec. 15, almost two years after the Dec. 27, 1985 attack on the crowded El Al and TWA check-in counters at Fiumicino Airport here. A 90-second shootout ensued with security guards in which Khaled’s companions died. Eighty-nine people were injured.

COURTROOM FORTIFIED

The trial is being held in a fortified court-room in Rome’s Rebibbia Prison. Abu Nidal and his right-hand man, Al Hamieda Rashid, are charged with Khaled for organizing the massacre and are being tried in absentia.

Khaled used his legal right to stay away from court during the second session Monday, but issued a statement read by his lawyer, Epifano Ales. In it, Khaled claimed Israeli security men were as guilty as he was for the massacre.

The court was adjourned until Jan. 15 amid concern by the prosecution that should Khaled continue to refuse to appear, he would not shed light on the Abu Nidal guerrilla group.

In an interview on Italy’s state-run television last March, Khaled accused Israeli security guards of firing first on him and his fellow gunmen, sparking off the shootout in which the indictment says 280 shots were fired: 102 by the Palestinians, 62 by Israeli El Al security guards and 16 by Italian security men.

HIJACKING WAS PLANNED

“The order was to carry out a different mission,” he said in the interview. “We were to commandeer a jetliner of the Israeli airline.

“I and a comrade who later fell in the shootout were going to the bar to have a drink. At that moment, an Israeli agent… pulled out a pistol and fired. So I opened my bag, took out my Kalachnikov and fired back. The Israelis fired first. We did not want to act inside the airport at all.”

He added: “What happened is not my fault. I only did what any Palestinian boy would have done.”

The indictment against Khaled, however, cites ballistics reports that the four Palestinians did start the attack by hurling three Bulgarianmade hand grenades into the early morning crowd and then opening fire with Kalachnikov assault rifles, manufactured in Poland, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union.

Authorities had hoped Khaled’s courtroom testimony would be the centerpiece of the trial and the basis for the state’s case.

In the statement read by his lawyer, Khaled described the Christmas massacre as an “unpardonable disaster” and “an action full of horror.” He called on Israelis and Palestinians to “put down their damned arms” and negotiate a peace settlement.

“I don’t have anything to expect from life. I have nothing. I want my death to arrive as soon as possible,” Khaled’s statement said. “Because ours was a suicide mission I don’t intend to defend myself. I intended to die.”

In a separate letter read by the court president, Khaled asked forgiveness from the families of the victims, saying he feared that if he appeared in court he would inflict more pain on them.

“I hope that the light of god touches also my Palestinian people, who suffer and mourn their dead – women, elderly, children,” his emotional letter, written in Italian, said.

“May the Israeli and Palestinian people put down their damned arms and sit together at a peace table,” said the letter, which told of his upbringing in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon that he described as cruel and hopeless.