Ali Atwi, a member of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, who is wanted by the FBI for his involvement in a 1985 plane hijacking, died of cancer on Friday.
“Ali Atwi died… of cancer,” his relative told AFP on the condition of anonymity, without providing additional details.
Hezbollah mourned Atwi’s death, saying it will receive condolences on Saturday in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
The United States had offered a reward of up to $5 million for information on Atwi for his role in planning and participating in the hijacking.
On June 14, 1985, the longest hijacking operation in aviation history began for TWA Flight 847.
Upon taking off from Athens airport heading to Rome, two Lebanese, Hezbollah members Muhammad Ali Hamadeh and Hassan Ezzedine - hijacked the Boeing-727 and forced it to change its course to Beirut. The plane had a crew of eight, in addition to 143 passengers, including 85 Americans and the late famous Greek singer Demis Roussos.
The hijackers forced the pilot to fly from Beirut twice to Algeria, where a number of hostages were freed.
On June 15, 1985 during the first stop in Beirut, one of the passengers, 23-year-old US Navy diver Robert Stethem, was severely beaten, shot point-blank in the head and his body thrown onto the tarmac, according to a report by AFP.
The Greek police arrested Atwi at Athens airport before he could board Flight 847, and sent him to Algeria.
The plane returned for the third time to Beirut, where it remained at the airport while intense negotiations were taking place. At the time, leader of the Amal movement and then Minister of Justice, Nabih Berri (currently Speaker of Parliament), helped transferring most of the hostages to different detention centers.
The hostages were freed in groups on June 30.
Hamadeh, one of the main hijackers, was arrested two years after the operation in Frankfurt, for transporting explosives, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in 2005 after serving 19 years in a German prison, however, he is still wanted by the FBI. Ezzedine is still at large.
