Indict Arafat : U.S. Law Can Prosecute Terrorists and Squelch Terrorism

To the category of meaningless gestures, add the United Nations’ condemnation this week of international terrorism.

After more than a decade of debate, the chief sponsors of world terrorism joined with its victims to declare all acts of terrorism as criminal. The resolution contained a definition of terrorism only slightly less ambiguous than the genealogy of a barn full of cats, and lacks any sanctions or enforcement mechanisms to dissuade nations from using terrorism to achieve their national objectives. It will not save one life or prevent one attack, and is a reminder of the frustrations associated with trying to use law to combat international terrorism.

Nations victimized by terrorism have increasingly resorted to the use of force, whatever the risk, to combat terrorism. However, while the judicious use of force may be the best answer in some situations, we cannot afford to give up on efforts to find appropriate legal mechanisms to secure the extradition and prosecution of terrorists who commit crimes abroad against the citizens and interests of our nation. What is needed are more imaginative applications of the law to the problem.

Now comes news of an effort under way in Washington to seek the indictment of Yasser Arafat in conjunction with the brutal murders of U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel, Charge d’Affaires G. Curtis Moore and Belgian diplomat Guy Eid in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1973.

While the Palestine Liberation Organization’s “Black September” was implicated at the time, Arafat’s role was a source of controversy. Now, new information has surfaced suggesting that the whole operation was planned with his knowledge and direction, and that he personally gave the order to shoot the three hostages. In addition to various State Department cables that seem to confirm Arafat’s role, the U.S. government is reported to have on tape an interception of the telephone conversation between the PLO chieftain and the killers. Armed with this and additional information, a coalition of groups led by former Deputy U.N. Ambassador Charles M. Lichenstein recently contacted Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III to press for Arafat’s indictment. Word from the Justice Department is that the matter is still under active consideration and that Meese has not yet made up his mind.

Any effort to reopen the case raises a number of sensitive legal and political issues. There are those at the State Department and elsewhere in the U.S. government, including friends of the slain Americans, who harbor no love for Arafat but nonetheless maintain that he is the least of many evils. They do not believe that any positive good could be achieved by further weakening him, thereby strengthening his more radical rivals for leadership of the PLO.

Moreover, there are serious questions relating both to jurisdiction and evidence that must be settled before any indictment could be handed down. For example, even if the existence of the tape of Arafat ordering the murders can be confirmed and the text of it made public, it must be established that the voice on the tape belongs, beyond any reasonable doubt, to Arafat. The question of jurisdiction may be easier to overcome. A federal court has held that crimes against the law of nations are “punishable under American law regardless of the nationality of the victims or the geographic location of the crimes.” A federal statute was enacted in 1976 asserting U.S. government jurisdiction in crimes against internationally protected persons, and the legislative history of the act suggests that Congress intended that the statute could be applied retroactively.

Terrorism threatens not only U.S. foreign policy but also what the noted British historian and civil servant Harold Nicholson called “the diplomatic method”--the set of practices and procedures governing relations between nations that has evolved over the centuries. The ancient Greeks were the first to recognize that an orderly international system must be governed by universally established and recognized principles, the most important being diplomatic immunity--the inviolability of diplomatic persons. Lately, terrorist attacks on diplomats and embassies have reached epidemic proportions. Over the past 15 years, diplomats from 113 nations have been targets of terrorism in 128 different countries. This makes international cooperation and understanding more difficult, not to mention the corrosive impact it has on the morale and effectiveness of the Foreign Service.

The United States has enjoyed little success in bringing to justice those responsible for the deaths of American diplomats and citizens abroad. It is time to reverse this trend. Recent legal action against terrorists involved in the hijackings of TWA flight 847 and the Achille Lauro, and Mrs. Leon Klinghoffer’s civil suit against the PLO, represent the opening of a new front in the war against international terrorism. As President Reagan told the American Bar Assn. in July: “We will act to indict, apprehend and prosecute those who commit the kind of atrocities the world has witnessed in recent weeks.”

Such a strategy not only reaffirms this nation’s belief in the rule of law; it also is a clear signal to the world of our commitment to seeing that justice is done and that terrorists do not go unpunished. Arrest warrants will deny terrorists mobility and access to international support, unless they want to run the risk of capture and extradition by a friendly power. Most of all, outstanding criminal indictments represent a real obstacle when organizations like the PLO seek diplomatic recognition and media approval, because they strip away what is often a carefully cultivated facade of respectability and expose them as the criminal gangs that they really are.

If Arafat is guilty of masterminding the Khartoum murders, he must be made to answer for it. An indictment of Arafat would not represent an indictment of the whole Palestinian people, but it would be a recognition that law must prevail over violence in the modern world, and that Palestinian interests are best served by people who understand this.