Abstract:
This is the culminating case in a series of six which explore the relationship among terrorism, politics, and Western legal systems. In this, the focus is on the domestic political consequences in Greece which result from a US request that the Greek government extradite Mohammed Rashid, a member of a splinter Palestinian liberation terrorist group accused of planting a bomb beneath the seat of a 1982 Pan American flight between Tokyo and Honolulu. Evidence painstakingly gathered by the FBI over a five-year period results in Rashid's indictment by a District of Columbia grand jury in 1987. But Rashid himself remains at large until, in May of 1988, the US learns through sources that he will be making a stopover in the Athens airport. The US decision to seek his arrest and extradition at that point roil politics in Greece, a key but not always enthusiastic NATO ally whose left-leaning government has maintained friendly relations with advocates of the Palestinian cause. The case invites a critique of the way both the US and Greek governments struck the balance between criminal law and politics.
