The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has published pictures of four participants in the hijacking of a Pan Am flight in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1986, showing them at an advanced age.
A statement posted on the FBI website said photographs of the suspects obtained in 2000 were processed at the FBI laboratory to show them at an advanced age.
“We hope that with the photos that show their age as well as the original pictures, it could stir up memories or perhaps someone saw these people walking around,” said one of the officers in charge of the case.
The US State Department also offered $ 5 million in compensation to those who provide information to help capture them through the Rewards for Justice program.
The US State Department included the group on its list of terrorist organizations, as well as on the FBI list of “most wanted terrorists”: Wadud Mohammed Hafez al-Turki, Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim, Mohammed Abdullah Khalil Hussein Al-Rahail and Mohammed Ahmed Al-Manwar.
The kidnapping took place on September 5, 1986, when the hijackers of the Palestinian organization Abu Nidal seized a plane belonging to the American company (Flight 73) for about 16 hours during its stop in Karachi. The flight was on its way from Mumbai to New York.
Twenty passengers and crew, including two US citizens, were killed in the kidnapping after the crisis ended with kidnappers opening fire on passengers and crew, prompting Pakistani commandos to break into the plane and arrest the hijackers.
The four men, in addition to a fifth hijacker, Zaid Hassan Abdul Latif al-Safarini, admitted in a 1988 trial in Pakistan that the attack was carried out and sentenced to death, but the sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment.
Safarini was released from prison in Pakistan in 2001 but was quickly arrested by US authorities and sentenced to 160 years in prison in Washington.
The other four hijackers were released by Pakistan after their 2008 sentence was terminated.
