World Notes: Greece

The Bush Administration would have preferred to see him tried in the U.S. But when Palestinian Mohammed Rashid, 40, was sentenced by a Greek court to 18 years in prison after being found guilty of premeditated murder in the 1982 bombing of a Pan American jet, Washington felt it had scored a victory.

Rashid was arrested in Athens in 1988 on a tip from U.S. officials who had assiduously tracked him down and gathered detailed evidence against him. But when Washington failed in its attempts to extradite him to stand trial in the U.S. for the midair bombing over Hawaii that killed a 16-year-old Japanese boy and injured 15 other passengers, officials feared that Greece might simply let Rashid go or acquit him. Now Rashid's lawyer is insisting that the Palestinian might be paroled in as little as seven years -- or even acquitted on appeal.