January 14, 1977
Page 1286
LETTERS OF PROTEST TO THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR
Mr. CRANSTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a statement of Senator HASKELL and attachments be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
REMARKS OF SENATOR FLOYD K. HASKELL
LETTER OF PROTEST TO THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR
Mr. HASKELL. Mr. President, like countless other Americans and people throughout the world, I felt a deep sense of outrage at the decision of French authorities to release suspected Black September terrorist Abu Daoud from custody. Daoud is accused of masterminding the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic games, an incident in which a total of 17 persons were killed. Decency demands that Daoud stand trial for his alleged role in that act of barbarism. Instead he is a free man in Algeria, transported there first class with the complicity of the French government.
I am proud that President-elect Carter and Secretary of State Kissinger publicly expressed their strong disapproval of the French action, and that a formal diplomatic protest was lodged. I felt compelled, however, to convey my own dismay regarding Daoud's release directly to the French Ambassador to the United States. I am grateful that 43 of my colleagues in the Senate have joined me in signing the letter, and am also honored that four Members of the House indicated their desire to sign the letter.
The Congress of the United States has made its point strongly and succinctly by conveying to the French the disgust which a great many Members feel at the decision to capitulate to political pressures and terrorist threats. My hope is that such a shameful incident will not recur.
Too many people have already suffered and died at the hands of ruthless political terrorists. Yet those individuals and organizations which resort to terrorism in pursuit of political ends can only take renewed encouragement from the French action.
I can only hope that we in the Congress and the executive branch will redouble our own efforts to combat terrorism as a result of this outrageous and disgraceful action.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the letter to the French Ambassador be printed in the RECORD alongwith two editorials from the Washington Post and the New York Times.
U.S. SENATE,
Washington, D.C.,
January 12, 1977.
His Excellency M. JACQUES KOSCIUSKO-MORIZET,
Ambassador of France,
Office of the Embassy,
Washington, D.C.
DEAR MR. AMBASSADOR: We deplore and deeply regret the decision of French authorities to release Abu Daoud from custody and allow his departure to Algeria.
Abu Daoud is strongly suspected of masterminding the massacre of eleven Israeli athletes participating in the 1972 Olympic games in Munich. A total of seventeen human beings were killed in that savage act. Abu Daoud should stand trial for his alleged role to their slaughter.
All governments, moreover, must cooperate in a genuine effort to expunge the scourge of political terrorism from the world. All too many people from many countries have suffered and died at the hands of ruthless political terrorists. The release of Abu Daoud can only mean renewed encouragement to those individuals and organizations which resort to terrorism in pursuit of political ends.
We trust you will convey our very deep dissatisfaction and dismay at this action to your government.
Sincerely,
Floyd K. Haskell, Hubert H. Humphrey, Clifford P. Case, Jacob K. Javits, Abraham Ribicoff, William Proxmire, Richard Stone, Birch Bayh, Jim Sasser,H. John Heinz, III, Lee Metcalf, Dale Bumpers, Edmund S. Muskie, Henry M.Jackson, Adlai E. Stevenson, III, Howard W. Cannon, John L. McClellan, Dennis DeConcini, John Melcher, Harrison A. Williams, Jr., Robert P. Griffin, Howard Metzenbaum, Thomas Eagleton, Dewey Bartlett, Wendell Anderson, William D. Hathaway, Wendell H. Ford, Richard S. Schweiker,Gaylord Nelson, Gary Hart, John Danforth, Alan Cranston, Walter D. Huddleston, Frank Church, Edward M. Kennedy, John H. Chafee, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, S. I. Hayakawa, Joseph R. Eiden, Lloyd Bentsen, Russell B. Long, J. Bennett Johnston, Bob Packwood, Strom Thurmond.
U.S. Senators.
Jonathan Bingham, Dante Fascell, Abner J. Mikva, Sidney R. Yates,
Members of Congress.
[From the Washington Post, Jan. 11, 1977]
LA BELLE FRANCE
Abu Daoud, alleged leader of the Munich Olympic massacre, is in Algeria today, courtesy of the government of France. He had slipped into Paris last week to attend a slain colleague's funeral. French officials knew exactly who he was, he was even received at the Foreign Ministry. They admitted him out of the familiar considerations which led France some years ago to mortgage its foreign policy to Arab oil and Arab markets — no matter that the actual fruits of this bootlicking policy are nonexistent. In fact, it was only by inadvertence that Mr. Daoud was even briefly inconvenienced. A "Black September" colleague, the mysterious "Carlos" had murdered two officers of a French police branch in 1975 and the branch, tipped off by the Israelis, thought Mr. Daoud was fair game under the law. He was arrested. Within a few days the French government, moving with a haste that preempted German and Israeli extradition requests, arranged for a court to let him go free.
The wonder is not that a suspected terrorist was sent off to plan who knows what other crimes — oh, how the French will pine if the future victims are Israelis. (One past victim of Mr. Daoud's organization was the American ambassador in Khartoum; he was killed while being held hostage against the release of Mr. Daoud from a previous incarceration, in Jordan in 1973). The wonder is that he was arrested and held at all. As it was, the Arabs had only to crook a finger at this formerly self-respecting nation, one which in its Gaullist years had elevated sovereignty virtually to a religion, to induce it to consummate its own humiliation. France wished to avoid complicating its relations with its Arab friends. It also wished to slough off the burden of holding a prisoner whose comrades might be tempted to take additional hostages to free him. All this seemed more important to Paris than acting with dignity.
Say what you will of the French government — it is not easily shamed. Counterattacking against the criticism it expected to receive (and is receiving) for releasing Mr. Daoud, it suggests that Israel had a suspect motive in wanting him arrested and publicly tried. That motive was not simply to combat terrorism, the French suggest, but to tar all Palestinians with a terrorist brush and thereby to blunt the building pressures to seat the Palestinians at a Geneva peace conference. The suggestion overlooks, however, the larger reality that there is nothing contradictory — indeed, there is much that is consistent — between fighting terrorism and searching for peace.
France may have opted out of both activities. There is little reason to think it will be sorely missed.
[From the New York Times, Jan. 11, 1977]
THE FRENCH ABJECTION
Three things stand out from the fog of extradition legalisms swirling in Paris concerning Abu Daoud, a Palestinian accused of planning the terror killings of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich in September 1972.
1. He is clearly a leader in the Palestinian terror movement. He once admitted, on television, to a role in the Munich massacre. His release from prison in Jordan in 1973 was important enough to that movement to generate the terrorist attack in which the American Ambassador to the Sudan was killed.
2. He was released yesterday, and with confounding haste. Both Israel and West Germany sought to extradite him for prosecution. French law would have permitted his detention for 18 days pending perfection of the extradition requests. Yet after a hearing yesterday, he was rushed to a first class seat on a plane bound for Algeria.
3. Especially recently, the French Government has taken an increasingly hard line concerning terrorists. It acted decisively and sternly against Croatian hijackers of an American plane last year. It recently agreed to a Common Market accord on extradition of terrorists. It has advocated severe antiterror measures.
Laws concerning extradition are often subjective, government policy often can and should affect judicial views. So the detached or legalistic explanations so far offered can hardly explain these dismaying contradictions. Without more, the French Government leaves a sad but unmistakable impression — of a great nation willing to look foolish, abject, even cowardly, at the thought of blackmail by terror.