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Greek Court Rules Palestinian Can Be Extradited to U.S.

October 11, 1988
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The Court of Appeals here has decided to extradite Mohammad Rashid, a Palestinian wanted in the United States in connection with two fatal airplane bombings.

The court announced its decision Monday after a week of deliberations that followed Rashid’s third hearing.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, Rashid was involved in the 1986 bombing of a TWA airliner over Greece in which three people were killed, and the bombing of a Pan Am plane over Honolulu in 1982 which killed a child.

He was arrested here last May 30 for entering Greece illegally and for possessing a forged passport.

While serving a seven-month sentence, Rashid’s extradition was requested by Washington.

His first two extradition hearings ended inconclusively for lack of evidence. He claimed mistaken identity, saying his name is Mohammad Hamdan and that he was framed by the CIA and its Israeli equivalent, the Mossad.

The last hearing was marked by charges of Israeli atrocities against Palestinians.

One witness, Haralambos Boukis, president of the Athens Medical Association, charged that the CIA trained a selected Israeli army unit how to break the arms of Palestinians.

Rashid himself said that Israelis slashed the wombs of pregnant Arab women to destroy the fetuses and cut the tongues out of Arab children.

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