Abu Abbas: an epitaph

Mohammed Abu Abbas (born Mohammed Zaidan) has died in US custody in Iraq, apparently of natural causes. Well, I suppose for a person in his line of work a bullet in the head would be a most natural cause, which is not to imply that he died of a bullet in the head. He was 56, and the leader of a terrorist organization called Palestine Liberation Front.

Abu Abbas's life's greatest achievement was his heroic victory in a gunfight with Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year old wheelchair-bound disabled senior citizen. The victory was assured by the fact that Klinghoffer was unarmed. I am sure that all the virgins that Abu Abbas will receive in heaven as a reward for this achievement will be also at least 69 years old, wheelchair-bound, but armed with hot pokers for a change.

The event he is most known for is the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985, which is where he won his rather one-sided gunfight with Klinghoffer. Abu Abbas has later claimed that the hijacking was an accident. Tell it to the judge.

In 1990 he organized a boat attack on a beach near Tel Aviv, but Israeli military has intercepted it and demonstrated that rubber boats don't work very well with bullet holes.

In his later years Abu Abbas declared himself a man of peace and was educating the younger generation of terrorists in training camps in Iraq.

For his various achievements Italy has awarded him a life sentence, United States have declared him a wanted person and PLO has elected him to its Executive Council.

Burn in hell, asshole.