Los Angeles Times Dubs Convicted Terrorists ‘Political Prisoners’

Rise above the noise! Go below the surface! Enjoy top-quality reporting, enjoins a recent Los Angeles Times ad campaign.

Instead, though, a recent movie review provides readers with noise instead of top-quality reporting, erroneously stating about the 1976 hijacking of Air France Flight 139:

In June 1976, two German and two Palestinian revolutionaries — the nomenclature varies from “freedom fighter” to “terrorist” depending on which side you’re on — hijacked an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris and directed it to Entebbel, Uganda, to demand the release of 52 political prisoners. (“Negotiations, maneuvers in a fine political thriller,” page E5, and online here. Emphasis added.)

The term “political prisoner” has a very distinct and well understood definition, and applies to those imprisoned for their political views. This definition does not apply to the 53 convicted terrorists, 40 held in Israel, six in West Germany, five in Kenya, and one each in Switzerland and France, whose release the hijackers demanded.

For instance, among them was Kozo Okamoto, a Japanese terrorist who carried out a deadly 1972 attack in Israel’s Lod Airport, killing 24 people. Ronald Fritsch, a member of an offshoot of the Baader-Meinhof group and imprisoned in West German, was convicted of the 1975 kidnapping of politician Peter Lorenz. Fritz Teufel, another member of the same Baader-Meinhof offshoot and also imprisoned in West Germany, was convicted of robbery, firearms offenses and belonging to a criminal organization. Another name on the list was Andreas Baader, of the Red Army Faction, convicted of the arson bombing of a Frankfurt department store. Ulrike Meinhof, Baader’s comrade in the RAF, was another whose release was demanded. She was charged with numerous murders and the formation of a criminal organization. Among the prisoners held in Israel was Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, charged with smuggling arms to Palestinian terrorists. (Four Kalashnikov rifles, two pistols, 220 pounds of dynamite and several detonators were found in his car in Jerusalem, as The New York Times noted in his 2017 obituary.) Israel also was holding Fatima Barnawi, who was serving a life sentence for planting a bomb in 1967. The prisoner held in Switzerland was Petra Krause, a German-Italian awaiting trial for explosives offenses. The five held in Kenya were imprisoned after an Israeli warning that the PFLP was about to attack an El Al flight in the Nairobi airport. (More details on the prisoners are here.) Is “political” the correct terminology for this activity?

As The Los Angeles Times correctly reported on the 10th anniversary of the hijacking (“10th Anniversary of Hostage Rescue,” Dan Fisher, July 3, 1986):

Two West German and two Palestinian gunmen took it over and ordered it to Uganda. Joined by three accomplices at Entebbe Airport and supported by the troops of then-President Idi Amin, the hijackers demanded freedom for 53 jailed terrorists and a $5-million ransom. (Emphasis added.)

In addition, the reference to the hijackers as “revolutionaries” — in reviewer Katie Walsh’s unfortunate words, “the nomenclature varies from ‘freedom fighter’ to ‘terrorist’ depending on which side you’re on” — is extremely problematic. Nowhere does Walsh note that the Palestinians were members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, recognized by the United States government as a terror group, and the Germans were members of the notorious Baader-Meinhof group, responsible for a wave of terror attacks.