Fawaz Younis (born 1959), also known as Fawaz Yunis and Nazeeh, is a Lebanese hijacker who was arrested in international waters pursuant to an arrest warrant issued in the United States. He was transported to the US and convicted; he was sentenced to 30 years. He was later deported after serving sixteen years of his sentence.
He was born in Lebanon and became an Amal Movement militiaman and then a part of Hezbollah. On June 11, 1985, he led a team that hijacked Royal Jordanian Flight 402 with two American nationals on board. [1] The Jordanian airliner was sitting on the tarmac at Beirut International Airport when it was stormed by Younis' team. The hijackers forced the flight crew to reveal the identities of the sky marshals to disable them and forced the plane to Tunis. Due to fuel shortage, the flight was diverted to Larnaca, Cyprus. Permission to land at Tunis was refused, so the flight diverted to Palermo. After refueling there, the aircraft was flown back to Beirut. In the early morning of June 12, the aircraft took off again, but returned again after two hours. After the 13-hour siege, the hijackers released the 70 passengers and blew up the plane. Younis appeared on television as a spokesman for the hijackers.
The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 created a new section in the U.S. Criminal Code for hostage taking and the Omnibus Diplomatic Security And Antiterrorism Act of 1986 established a new extraterritorial statute pertaining to terrorist acts conducted abroad against U.S. citizens and interests. Upon approval by the host country, the FBI has the legal authority to deploy FBI personnel to conduct extraterritorial investigations in the host country where the criminal act has been committed, enabling the United States to prosecute terrorists for crimes committed against U.S. citizens. [2]
In September 1987, Younis was lured aboard a yacht in international waters off Cyprus with promises of a drug deal, [3] arrested by the FBI, and flown to Andrews Air Force Base using an S-3 Viking from on board USS Saratoga. [4] He was the first person charged under the new federal hostage-taking statute that gave the U.S. jurisdiction over terrorist acts overseas involving American citizens. He was sentenced to 30 years in a U.S. federal prison.
Fawaz Younis was released by the U.S. government on February 18, 2005, and deported to Lebanon in March 2005 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a sub-department of the Homeland Security Department, after serving sixteen years of his sentence. [5]
The Japanese Red Army was a militant communist organization active from 1971 to 2001. It was designated a terrorist organization by Japan and the United States. The JRA was founded by Fusako Shigenobu and Tsuyoshi Okudaira in February 1971 and was most active in the 1970s and 1980s. After the Lod Airport massacre, it sometimes called itself the Arab-JRA. The group was also known as the Anti-Imperialist International Brigade (AIIB), the Holy War Brigade, and the Anti-War Democratic Front.
A series of Islamist terrorist attacks linked to al-Qaeda were planned to occur on or near January 1, 2000, in the context of millennium celebrations, including bombing plots against four tourist sites in Jordan, the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and USS The Sullivans and the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814.
Robert Dean Stethem was a United States Navy Seabee diver who was murdered by Hezbollah terrorists during the hijacking of the commercial airliner he was aboard, TWA Flight 847. At the time of his death, his Navy rating was Steelworker Second Class (SW2). He was posthumously promoted to Master Chief Constructionman (CUCM).
Pan Am Flight 73 was a Pan American World Airways flight from Bombay, India, to New York, United States with scheduled stops in Karachi, Pakistan and Frankfurt, West Germany.
Trans World Airlines Flight 847 was a flight from Cairo to San Diego with en route stops in Athens, Rome, Boston, and Los Angeles. On the morning of June 14, 1985, Flight 847 was hijacked shortly after take off from Athens. The hijackers demanded the release of 700 Shia Muslims from Israeli custody and took the plane repeatedly to Beirut and Algiers. Later Western analysis considered them members of the Hezbollah group, an allegation Hezbollah rejects.
Ali Atwa was a Lebanese national and member of the Islamist organization Hezbollah. Atwa was also known as Ammar Mansour Bouslim and Hassan Rostom Salim.
Hasan Izz-Al-Din is a Lebanese national wanted by the United States government.
Uli Derickson, was a German American flight attendant best known for her role in helping protect 152 passengers and crew members during the June 14, 1985, hijacking of TWA Flight 847 by militants with alleged links to Hezbollah.
Mohammed Ali Hammadi, also known as Mohammed Ali Hamadi is one of the list of FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists most notable for being the lead hijacker in the TWA Flight 847 hijacking. A Lebanese citizen and alleged member of Hezbollah, he was convicted in a West German court of law of air piracy, murder, and possession of explosives for his part in the 14 June 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847.
The 1983 Kuwait bombings were attacks on six key foreign and Kuwaiti installations on 12 December 1983, two months after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing. The 90-minute coordinated attack on two embassies, the country's main airport, and petro-chemical plant was more notable for the damage it was intended to cause than what was actually destroyed. What might have been "the worst terrorist episode of the twentieth century in the Middle East" killed only six people because of the bombs' faulty rigging.
The Lebanon hostage crisis was the kidnapping in Lebanon of 104 foreign hostages between 1982 and 1992, when the Lebanese Civil War was at its height. The hostages were mostly Americans and Western Europeans, but 21 national origins were represented. At least eight hostages died in captivity; some were murdered, while others died from lack of adequate medical attention to illnesses. During the fifteen years of the Lebanese civil war an estimated 17,000 people disappeared after being abducted.
Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U.S. 519 (1952), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that kidnapping of suspects by State authorities is constitutional if done so to take the suspect from one jurisdiction to another for criminal trial. The defendant was tried in Michigan after being abducted by Michigan authorities in Chicago, Illinois. The case was related to the previous case of Ker v. Illinois (1886). Both cases together created the Ker–Frisbie doctrine, which is used to validate the reasoning behind seemingly illegal and unconstitutional extradition and abduction from other countries or from state to state on the basis of a prosecution being brought against the individual.
Fauzi Mohammed Ayub, , was a Lebanese-Canadian who was a member of Hezbollah and arrested in 2002 by the Israeli Defence Forces. Two years later he was released to his wife and three children in Lebanon in a prisoner exchange that saw 436 Palestinians and Lebanese released in exchange for Elhanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers abducted four years earlier.
Fawaz is a male, Arabic given name. It can be translated to a person who wins, as it is the adjective from the verb meaning. Therefore, it can be thought of as the equivalent to Victor or Victorious.
The Achille Lauro hijacking took place on 7 October 1985, when the Italian ocean liner MS Achille Lauro was hijacked by four men representing the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) off the coast of Egypt, as she was sailing from Alexandria to Ashdod, Israel. A 69-year-old Jewish American man in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer, was murdered by the hijackers and thrown overboard. The hijacking sparked the "Sigonella Crisis".
The hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 615 was an act of Palestinian terrorism that occurred on 29 October 1972 and aimed at the liberation of the three surviving perpetrators of the Munich massacre from a West German prison.
From 1985 to 1986, a series of terrorist attacks in Paris, France was carried out by the Committee for Solidarity With Arab and Middle Eastern Political Prisoners (CSPPA), a previously unknown group, demanding the release of three imprisoned international terrorists. The CSPPA was believed to have been some combination of Palestinians, Armenian nationalists, and Lebanese Marxists, though it was later reported that they were mainly instigated by Hezbollah, sponsored by the Iranian state. The CSPPA demanded the release of Anis Naccache, from the Iranian state network; Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, member of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF); and Varadjian Garbidjan, member of the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA).
The 1973 Hellinikon International Airport attack was an attack at the Hellinikon International Airport at Athens, Greece. The two attackers were members of the Palestinian militant organization Black September. The militants used sub-machine guns and grenades against the passengers waiting in the passenger lounge. The attackers took hostages before they finally surrendered to the Greek police. It is believed that the gunmen wanted to hijack a plane, but they decided to attack when they were about to be searched by a Greek security inspector before boarding.