ISLAMABAD, May 17: Release or not to release is the question which is bothering the officials dealing with the matter of four Palestinians convicted on the charge of hijacking a PanAm plane in 1986.

These Palestinians have completed their life imprisonment but no country in the world, including the Palestinian Authority and other Arab states, is ready to accept them.

The FBI, whose representatives visited them in Adiala jail, are waiting to take them to the United States for trying them on the charge of killing American citizens.

One of the hijackers, Mustafa Boomer, has already landed in the United States after being released from Adiala jail, when his brother, who had come from the United States, produced a Jordanian passport for him.

Saleem Sheikh advocate, who visited other Palestinians in Adiala jail on the instructions of the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court, apprehended that Mustafa Boomer was flown to the United States under a deal.

He said Mustafa’s brother, who lives in the United States, had struck a deal with the FBI, assuring them that his brother would testify against the remaining hijackers if he was made approver in the case.

The Lahore High Court, Rawalpindi Bench, in its last hearing in March this year, ordered the release of Palestinians and directed the interior ministry to make arrangements for their deportation.

The question which bothered the officials is where to deport them. Pakistan’s Foreign Office also wrote embassies of Arab countries in Islamabad to take Palestinians.

Salahuddin, section officer at the Foreign Office, wrote letters to Iraq, and Lebanon to take the Palestinians. However, both the embassies expressed their inability in this regard.

These Palestinians, lodged in Adiala jail, have reportedly informed the government that their priority was to go back to Palestine. But if, for some reason it was not possible, they would like to stay in Pakistan.

They are reportedly imploring Pakistani officials not to hand them over to the FBI for extradition to the United States. Initially they were awarded death sentence. However, their death sentence was commuted into life imprisonment in December 1988, when the then Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, declared general amnesty.

The Palestinian hijackers also have a lot of complaints against Palestinian Ambassador to Pakistan, Ahmed Abdul Razzaq, who is not ready to accept them as Palestinian citizens.

His plea for not accepting them as Palestinian, they stated, was that all the hijackers had entered Pakistan on Jordanian and Syrian passports, and could not be provided diplomatic passports.

Those lodged in jail are Mansoor Al Rashid, Mansur Al Khalil, Jamal Abdul Rahimi and Salaman Al El Turki.