ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistani authorities freed four Palestinians on Thursday who were convicted in the 1986 hijacking of a Pan Am jet in Karachi that left 22 passengers and crew dead, a prison official said. The men were released after completing their jail terms and deported to the Palestinian territories, said the official on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.The alleged leader of the group, a Palestinian called Zayd Hassan Abd Al-Latif Masud Al Safarini, was released from prison in Pakistan in 2001 through a series of amnesties, but was arrested a day later by FBI agents in Bangkok on his way to Jordan. In 2003, a U.S court sentenced Safarini to three consecutive life terms plus 25 years for his role in the hijacking. The five men hijacked the Pan Am Boeing 747 as it sat at Karachi airport waiting to fly to Frankfurt, Germany, en route to New York. They were demanding the release of 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israel and Cyprus. Later the same day, Pakistani commandos stormed the plane and the hijackers began shooting and throwing hand grenades at the passengers and crew they had herded into one area of the plane, according to court papers presented at the U.S. trial of Safarini. In all, 22 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. The five men were arrested.
At a 1988 trial in Pakistan, the Palestinians admitted carrying out the hijacking, but blamed Pakistani troops for the passengers' deaths. All five were given death sentences that were commuted to life in prison, which means serving 14 years in Pakistan. The men had been held in a high-security prison in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near the capital Islamabad. The prison official gave the names of those released Thursday as Mohammed Abdul Khalil Hussain, Daud Mohammed Hafiz, Mohammed Ahmed al-Munawar and Jamal Saeed.