LONDON -- One of three gunmen thought to be Palestinian and held in Cyprus in the fatal shooting of three Israelis on a yacht has been identified as a Briton by Cypriot police, British news reports said today.
British reports said Ian Davison, 28, left his northeast England home to enlist in the Palestine Liberation Organization after the 1982 massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in Beirut refugee camps by Israeli-backed Lebanese Christian militiamen.
Davison identified himself as George Hanna when he surrendered to Cypriot police with two companions after the three gunmen boarded an Israeli-owned yacht in Larnaca harbor Wednesday and killed a woman and two men, all Israelis.
The attackers, who surrendered after a 10-hour stand-off with Cypriot police, demanded the release of 20 Palestinian guerrillas captured at sea last month by Israeli forces while sailing to Lebanon.
'The Cypriot authorities have formally confirmed it was the same man' as Davison, a Foreign Office spokesman said in London.
British news reports said Davison, who left school in his hometown of South Shields at 16 and spent four years in the United States, joined the PLO in Jordan and became a member of Yasser Arafat's 'Force 17' personal bodyguard.
He was among 4,000 PLO fighters shipped to Cyprus and then to South Yemen when the PLO pulled out of Lebanon in 1983, the reports said.
In his early days, Davison said he was a footall 'skinhead, a real young Fascist' who lived for weekend drinking and fighting with rival fans, the reports said.
The Foreign Office said its consul in Cyprus would seek formal access to Davison early next week, but so far as Britain is concerned 'he will get exactly the same sort of treatment as any Briton arrested anywhere in the world. He will get no more nor no less.'
'We have no standing to interfere, nor would we wish,' the spokesman said.
