Sioux City Journal from Sioux City, Iowa • 12

A12-The Sioux City Journal, Tuesday, November 19, 1985 Court convicts ship hijackers on arms charges GENOA, Italy (AP) Five Palestinians were.convicted Monday on charged of Illegal possession of arms and explosives in the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship and were given prison terms ranging from tour to nine years. Four hijacked the Italian vessel and the prosecutor said the fifth helped supply them with weapons. Written statements from three defendants were read in court and they said that aides to PLO official Mohammed Abbas delivered the weapons used in the takeover. Abbas has denied that and also the claim by the United States that he organised the hijacking. One hijacker told the court the pirates never intended to commandeer the ship but planned to launch an attack at the Achille Lauro's next port of call, which was In Israel.

The four hijackers face trial at a later 'date on charges of kidnapping and of murdering an American passenger aboard the liner during the Oct. 7-9 ordeal. A panel of three judges convicted the five men after hearing testimony in the morning. There was no Jury. The judges deliberated for two hours and 20 minutes before announcing the verdicts.

Dozens of heavily armed police in bulletproof vests patrolled the Palace of Justice and nearby streets during the trial, and everyone entering the courtroom was subjected to searches by metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs. The defendants, in handcuffs and blue jeans, were brought into the gymnasium-sized courtroom and divided among three metal-barred cages. They greeted their sentences with an outburst of pro-Palestinian chants. "We will defend with our blood and soul our country," they chanted in Arabic while waving victory signs through the bars of their cages. The stiffest sentence of nine years plus a fine of about $1,700 was given to Mohammed Issa Abbas, identified previously as Mohammed Kalaf, who was arrested in Genoa carrying false passports before the Italian ship began its Mediterranean cruise.

Abbas said in court that he was a distant cousin of Mohammed Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, one of the smallest and most radical of the factions comprising the Palestine Liberation Organization. Prosecutor Luigi Carli stopped short of naming the person who allegedly planned the hijack, but he repeatedly referred to defendant Mohammed Issa Abbas as "a relative of the mastermind." Carli asked for sentences ranging from to 9 years. The charges carried a maximum of 12 years imprisonment. The lightest sentence of four years was given to Ahmed Marrouf al-Assadi. Investigators said al-Assadi cooperated with them, and several witnesses have described him as being kind to the hostages.

Youssef Magied al-Molqi, the self- described leader of the group, drew an eight-year sentence; Ibrahim Fatayer Ab-del-Latif got seven years and three months; and Bassam al-Ashker, the youngest of the defendants at 19, was sentenced to six years and six months. After the hijackers surrendered, U.S. jet fighters forced an Egyptian airliner carrying Mohammed Abbas and the four hijackers to land in Sicily, where the four were arrested. Mohammed Abbas was allowed to leave, despite protests by the U.S. government.

None of the defendants denied involvement in the affair. But they did not talk about the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, the American passenger who was shot and tossed overboard in his wheelchair. Invoy hurries back to Lebanon Robert Runcie, spiritual head of the Anglican church. He left on a Paris-bound flight and was to fly on to the Lebanese capital today. Waite spent the morning with U.S.

officials who came to London for the meeting, and conferred separately later with British government officials. He made a long report to the archbishop Sunday night at Lambeth Palace, Runcie's London residence. The envoy would not identify the U.S. officials or give details of the talks. "Loose words can cost lives and I don't want any more lives to be lost in this unhappy drama," he said.

"All I will say is that today we had extremely useful and helpful LONDON (AP) The Archbishop of Canterbury's special envoy left for Lebanon Monday night to meet again "with kidnappers of Americans whose release he is trying to arrange. He conferred with U.S. officials in London. think there are certain things that I can now say (to the kidnappers) which I hope will take the conversations forward and help us in this long and difficult process of negotiation," Terry Waite told reporters at London's Heathrow Airport. He left with obvious urgency less than 24 hours after arriving from Beirut.

He went there last week after four of six missing Americans wrote an appeal for help to Archbishop Waite said he remained "optimistic" and would stay in Beirut "as long as necessary," but would not predict when the hostages might be released. "The point is that when you have momentum you must keep it going," he said. "I think there's a good chance we're going to go forward again." He urged the captives' families to keep their hopes up: "While we've got this momentum and while we're in talking that's a good sign." Waite had said Sunday that he would return to Beirut later. After meeting with the U.S. officials, he decided to go back immediately via Paris instead of waiting until Wednesday for the next direct flight to the Lebanese capital.

His departure came as a message was given to a Western news agency in Beirut purportedly from Islamic Jihad, a Shiite Moslem extremist group that claims to hold the Americans saying one of four French hostages also being held was gravely ill. The Frenchman was not identified. Waite has said previously that although his mission is primarily concerned with the Americans, he will do what he can to raise the case of the Frenchmen, who apparently are being held separately. He also has inquired about Alec Collett, a British journalist who was kidnapped while on assignment for a U.N. agency.

Florida Council gives first reading to airport board ordinance gracing for Kate necessary authority to get things done, or of City Manager J.R. Castner. He credited Castner with a number of improvements that have been made, including more competitive air fares on some flights. Callendar said recent improvements are indications that a change in the structure isn't needed. Bodine said reducing the board from nine to seven members isn't going to make any difference and deplored the increase in the number of administrative boards.

Nelson, chairman of the advisory board, told the council Monday that the board voted 7 to 2 in favor of a board of trustees when he polled members by telephone last week. The board had voted against the change at an earlier meeting. advisory board and four other businessmen to serve on the new board. They are William T. Dible, who first proposed the creation of a board of trustees, Charles Long, Jack Aalfs and Wilson Persinger, and present members Warren "Bud" Nelson, Jan Albertson and George Wilen.

Dible again appeared before the council and said a board with more authority is needed to make needed improvements in airline service. He said the present system in which the airport is under the jurisdiction of the city manager has not been working because of deteriorating service. Van Dyke agreed, but said he was not being critical of the present board, which he said hasn't had the By Bob Gunsolley Journal staff writer The City Council, on a 3 to 2 vote, gave first reading Monday to an ordinance creating a board of trustees to run the Municipal Airport Councilmen Loren Callendar and Conny Bodine cast the dissenting votes. The ordinance, which must get two more readings in the next couple of weeks, would create a seven-member board appointed to three-year terms by the City Council. It would replace the present nine-member airport board which is advisory only.

i Mayor John Van Dyke proposed the names of three members of the sV i jj -5 41 rr I 7- Americans, Viets to begin first joint search for MIAs (AP) People flocked out of the vulnerable Florida Keys on Monday and Bob Graham declared a state of emergency in South Florida as Hurricane Kate churned across tiny Bahamian islands. Boaters gathering to escape winter in the North were told to head for safe inland and residents of mobile; homes and beachfront coqdqminiums were urged to find more-secure shelter. we ought to be worried," said Neil Frank, director of the National Hurricane Center. "This isn't the big awesome kind of storm we see in September, but it's a very respectable hurricane. "Anyone who lives in Key West ought to be taking this hurricane seriously," he added.

"You can get killed in a hurricane like this if you totally ignore it." At 7 p.m. CST, Kate's highest sustained winds of 110 mph were centered near latitude 22.2 north and longitude 77.2 west, in the southeastern Bahamas and about 325 miles southeast of Miami, in what local weather veterans call "Hurricane Alley." The eye was being carried west at 20 mph by what Frank called "a fairly decent river of air." "If it should continue on this course, it should begin to produce hurricane conditions along north-central Cuba over the next few hours," forecaster Miles Lawrence said at 8 p.m. "If this hurricane should turn a little bit north of its due-west course, then hurricane conditions could spread across South Florida" today. Five to 10 inches of rain was expected along its path, the advisory said. I -v CvWl.i.5.vot,V'rs- Cr 4 1 1 I i HANOI, Vietnam (AP) Village children lined the road Monday and watched a gum-chewing U.S.

soldier drive a tractor to the excavation site at Yen Thuong village on the outskirts of Hanoi, where remains of U.S. airmen may be buried. In an unprecedented joint search, American and Vietnamese military men are to begin digging today for remains of the airmen, who the Vietnamese say bombed their cities 13 years ago. Workers tore down a brick kitchen building so Sgt. Michael Dixon and his 7Vfe-ton tractor could enter the village.

Hundreds of children gathered as Dixon, wearing a baseball cap and Hawaiian print shirt, jockeyed the tractor to the village from Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport. Dixon, from Oak Hill, W. is attached to the 84th Engineering Battalion at Schofield, Honolulu. The tractor, water pumps, metal take 10 to 12 days. "The significance of this first joint excavation is obvious and we are encouraged by the increased willingness of the Vietnamese to cooperate" in the search for remains, Pribyla said.

Hanoi has pledged to account within two years for the 1,797 Americans still listed as missing in action in Vietnam. U.S. officials have no independent confirmation of the crash, but long-time inhabitants of Yen Thuong said the B-52 was downed by missiles while on a bombing raid on the night of Dec. 20, 1972. Vietnamese officials said that two crew members parachuted out, were captured and later returned to the United States, and that four other crewmen probably died in the crash.

Many Vietnamese were killed or injured in the 1972 "Christmas bombings" ordered by President Nixon on the Hanoi-Haiphong area. detectors and other equipment arrived Monday aboard a U.S. Air Force C-141 transport plane. Air Force Capt. Virginia Pribyla, spokeswoman for the U.S.

team, said a short ceremony today would mark the start of the dig. She said U.S. experts would use metal detectors to determine where and how far to dig. After the tractor clears the upper layer of earth, workers with hand shovels will probe for what the Vietnamese say may be the wreckage of a B-52 and the remains of four crew members, she said. She said the workers would have to watch out for possible unexploded ordnance.

The 13-member U.S. military team includes explosives experts and specialists in locating and recovering human remains. Helping them will be 10 Vietnamese soldiers and civilians experienced in excavation work. The operation is expected to i.r Hee, hee, ho, ho Santa seems to chortle over the rains that early Christmas shoppers endured Monday. Maybe he thinks they should be writing to the North Pole.

(Staff photo by Gary Anderson) Ratings war just beginning Lawmakers unveil bill to rescue FCS from page one more news, even though two reporters and a producer were eliminated during the purge. Lombardo announced that the ratings war between his new acquisition and rival station KTIV Channel 4 is just beginning. "The viewers will see a better product," he said. "We're going to begin using all the very talented people here who in my opinion are under-utilized. The interview segment at noon will be reformulated.

It won't be fluff anymore. We'll be interviewing newsmakers and addressing issues that are important to the community. "I fully intend to make this station No. 1 in the market." during the 10 p.m. newscast, which she now anchors alone.

Her 10 p.m. replacement has not been announced. Lombardo said Shell made the decision herself to give up the 10 p.m. anchor spot. He said replacing her is not a reflection of the poor ratings that have plagued both newscasts during her tenure.

Co-anchor at 6 p.m., Gary Mickelson, will fill in as acting sports director while Mark Ahmann is on a leave of absence. Other staffers will fill in for Mickelson. Solo noon news anchor Julie White will be joined by reporter Dave Preheim as co-anchor. The result, Lombardo said, will be Senate GOP struggling with farm bill WASHINGTON (AP) Senate Republicans struggled Monday to put together a compromise farm bill package that could not only pass, but could weather an anticipated filibuster by Democrats worried about GOP cost-cutting moves. Majority Leader Robert Dole, spent the day in a series of meetings with commodity lobbyists and farm-state senators, and also met with administration budget director James Miller.

A version of the farm bill now before the Senate would freeze farm income protection at current levels lor' the next four years, a move proponents say is needed to buffer farmers against the worst agriculture depression in decades. But (he Reagan administration, estimating the measure could cost nearly" double the $34.8 billion in commodity program spending called for over the next three years by Congress' budget blueprint, is threatening a veto. Dole has been trying feverishly for the past week to line up support behind a package that would cut that four-year freeze to one year, saving some $7.6 billion. On Monday, he got some help from Miller, who according to one Senate staff source offered in the private meeting to spend up to $30 billion on farm programs over three years in effect, to bust the budget if subsidies could be phased downward beginning in 1987. The-administration has made no secret of its willingness to exceed the budgetary spending levels.

Hostage may have been slain tor trying to help co-workers with further losses expected in 1986 and 1987. Such losses would soon eat up everything the system has set aside as a buffer against bad loans, the system says. Both the system and its regulatory agency, the Farm Credit Administration, have asked Congress for a line of credit of up to $6 billion to tide it over the next three years. The bill co-sponsored by Reps. Ed Jones, Edward Madigan, and Tom Coleman, would provide the financial help only if the system's regulators certify that FCS has done everything it reasonably can to help itself.

Whether the aid is ultimately provided would be up to the secretary of the Treasury. Two features of the bill, those revamping the system's organization and the powers of its regulators, already have been endorsed in some form by all sides. Self-help features in the Agriculture Committee members' proposal would provide for a central pool of readily available financing to be used for quick aid to ailing system institutions. Although the system now operates on a shared-loss principle, in practice it has been slow to shift financial resources to banks in need because clearance has been needed from its many banks' local governing boards. WASHINGTON (AP) -Farm-state lawmakers on Monday unveiled legislation aimed at rescuing the troubled Farm Credit System, including a $3 billion backup line of credit.

The measure, to be formally introduced today by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Kika de la Garza, D-Texas, and three other senior committee members, calls for stronger regulation of the loosely knit $70 billion lending system and a streamlining of FCS's cumbersome organization. Whether financial aid should be included in any package for the system, whose size would make It the nation's third-largest bank if it were a normal commercial institution, has been the subject of hot debate. The Reagan administration has resisted any effort at financial aid, arguing -that the system has untapped resources it can use. The system, the nation's largest farm lender, is suffering along with the rest of the agriculture sector from the most serious rural depression in decades. Farmland values the collateral for the bulk of the system's loans have plummeted up to 50 percent over the past five years in the hardest hit areas of the Midwest.

System officials report that the 37 cooperatively owned banks will together lose $2.5 billion this year, All of the department heads sat down and we decided what positions we needed and what positions no longer fit." Viewers may be in for another round of musical chairs until the predicted shuffling of on-air talent is complete. Nightly news anchor Teri Shell has been promoted to news director, filling a vacancy left when Jack Gilbert resigned in late summer. Lombardo said that Shell will continue as lead anchor during the 6 p.m. newscast but will be replaced Weinberg says pushing too fast from page one Weinberg said the dome proposal by a group called Phoenix II would not be adequate as a convention center and he also questioned some of the revenue projections for the facility. Before his proposal was selected as one of the finalists, Weinberg said the council was trying to hurry the project too much and that as a result the public wasn't getting enough information on any of the proposals.

But Jerry McCann, a spokesman for Phoenix II, said the dome proposal is the only one that can get tax exempt financing before the first of the year. execution-style killing," said Lt. Jerry Cooper of the Marion County sheriff's department. Cooper, who is heading the Investigation, said he believes Bible was so emphatic about turning off the freezer that he might have upset the robbers, and that may have led to his death. Meanwhile, another investigator said progress is being made in the search for suspects.

McDonald's is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of suspects in the case, said Sgt. Neil Sullivan. INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Two robbers may have shot to death a fast-food restaurant manager because the man, who offered himself as their hostage, tried to turn off a freezer so five coworkers locked Inside wouldn't freeze, a detective said Monday. Investigators said a preliminary autopsy performed Monday showed the manager, 24-year-old Dewayne F. Bible, was shot twice behind the right ear Sunday with a gun during the robbery at a McDonald's.

"To me, it looks like an.