TWA 847 Hijacking Mastermind Pays the Price

Turns out that Imad Mughniyeh isn’t getting away with murder after all:

A senior Hezbollah military commander, one of the world’s most wanted men for his alleged links to a string of bombings, hijackings and kidnappings during the 1980s and 1990s, has been killed, Hezbollah said Wednesday…

…U.S. officials assert that Mughniyeh was behind the bombings in Beirut in 1983. A car bomb at the U.S. Embassy in April that year killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, while a truck bomb in October at a Marine compound killed 241 American troops.

The United States have also asserted Mughniyeh was behind the torture and murder of William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, in 1984; the kidnapping and murder of Lieutenant Colonel William Richard Higgins of the Marines, who was on peacekeeping duty in Lebanon in 1988; and, through the Islamic Jihad Organization, the seizure of Western hostages in Beirut during the 1980s.

Mughniyeh is also wanted for the hijacking in June 1985 of a TWA flight. During the hijacking, an American was killed and 39 Americans were held hostage for 17 days. It is the only terrorist action for which he has been indicted in the United States…

Joe Roche, an adjunct fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, wrote about Mughniyeh for us back in 2001, saying Mughniyeh at that time had been identified to U.S. authorities by Israel “as one of two who were setting up nearly 200 terrorists inside the U.S. for a major attack.”

I wrote about the TWA 847 hijackers and murderers of sailor Robert Stethem getting away scot-free in 2005; it appears that they all haven’t gotten away scot-free after all.

Ronald Reagan said in 1985 regarding Robert Stethem’s murder and the TWA hijacking: “We will not rest until justice is done.” It took 22 years to get Imad Mughniyeh, but Reagan called it right. Whomever got him wasn’t resting.
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