BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 10 (UPI) -- The wife of Palestine Liberation Front leader Abu Abbas, who died in U.S. custody in Baghdad, said she was not sure of the cause of his death.
"The Americans said he died from a heart failure, but they could have fabricated the story. Nobody knows," Rim Abbas told UPI.
She said Abu Abbas, whose real name was Mohammad Abbas, suffered from high blood pressure but his condition was stable and he was taking medication.
She said contacts were under way to secure the transfer of the body for burial inside the Palestinian territories,
PLF official Abdel Fatah Ghanem accused U.S. forces in Iraq of deliberately neglecting Abu Abbas' health leading to a severe and fatal stroke.
Abu Abbas was mostly remembered for the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship, Achille Lauro, in the Mediterranean in October 1985. During the hijacking, a wheelchair-bound American Jew, Leon Klinghoffer, was shot and thrown overboard.
Pentagon sources said Abbas died of natural causes Monday. An autopsy will was planned.
Abbas was apprehended by U.S. troops when Baghdad fell last April.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had demanded his release on the grounds that the United States had promised not to prosecute him and others as part of an agreement not to chastise Palestinians who acted against Israel prior to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords.
