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- <text id=92TT0280>
- <title>
- Feb. 10, 1992: World Notes:Terrorists
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Feb. 10, 1992 Japan
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 41
- World Notes
- TERRORISTS
- Undiplomatic Illness
- </hdr><body>
- <p> The zone of quiet around the posh Henry-Dunant hospital in
- Paris was fractured by a political thunderclap last week with
- the arrival of George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for
- the Liberation of Palestine. His organization has carried out
- airliner hijackings and bloody terrorist attacks in France,
- Israel and elsewhere since the late 1960s, including the 1976
- hijacking of an Air France plane to Uganda that was liberated
- by Israeli troops. Yet Habash, 65, was routinely admitted to the
- country and the hospital for treatment of a stroke he suffered
- in Tunis.
- </p>
- <p> Israel was outraged, and so were many leading French
- politicians. When President Francois Mitterrand, on a visit to
- Oman, heard what had happened, he demanded and got the
- resignations of the three senior civil servants who were
- involved in admitting Habash. The head of the French Red Cross,
- who acted as liaison in moving Habash, resigned as an adviser
- to Mitterrand.
- </p>
- <p> Unless Habash is very ill, said the President, "his stay
- will be extremely brief." And so it was. After doctors said the
- guerrilla leader was unable to talk, a magistrate who had
- ordered police to hold him for questioning rescinded the order.
- At that, Habash decided to skip further treatment. He hurried
- to Orly airport on Saturday and flew back to his home in Tunis.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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