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Terrorist In NYC Hijacking, Bombing Granted Parole

NEW YORK (AP) ― A Croatian terrorist has been granted parole after serving 30 years in prison for hijacking a jet and planting a bomb that killed a New York City police officer.

Zvonko Busic was the leader of a group that commandeered a TWA flight as it left LaGuardia Airport in 1976 in an attempt to draw attention to Croatia's struggle for independence from communist Yugoslavia.

The five separatists took the plane to Montreal, London and Paris before authorities shot out its tires and persuaded them to surrender.

Their claim to have explosives aboard the aircraft turned out to be a hoax. The bombs were fakes, made of putty.

But the fighters had also stashed a real bomb in a locker at Grand Central Terminal to persuade authorities that their threat to blow up the aircraft was real.

Later, the bomb went off as police attempted to defuse it, killing one officer and blinding a second.

Busic was convicted in 1977 and got life in prison for air piracy. He briefly escaped from an upstate prison in 1987 after positioning a dummy in his bed and digging under a fence, but was quickly recaptured.

As a condition of his parole, Busic, 62, will be deported to Croatia and barred from ever returning to the U.S. He remains in custody pending his removal hearings, which are expected to take about two months, federal officials said.

News of Busic's pending release shocked the widow of the slain officer, Brian Murray.

Kathleen Murray, 60, told The New York Times she wished the government had given her an opportunity to respond before authorizing his release.

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly called Busic's release "outrageous."

"He killed a New York City police officer, besides the other things that he did," Kelly said. "It's just a matter of principle that anybody who kills a police officer should not be paroled."

A lawyer in Oregon who represented Busic did not immediately return a phone call Saturday.

Busic is viewed as a national hero by some in Croatia, which became independent in 1991 after a bloody war with ethnic Serbs. The Croatian parliament asked the U.S. in 2002 to let him serve the last years of his sentence in his home country.

He would become the last of the conspirators in the 1976 plot to be released.

(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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