Born in 1948 in the village of Tirat near Haifa, in what was then British-mandated Palestine, Abbas -- also known as Mohammed Abbas -- was taken by his family from what was about to become Israel in a bitter war just days after his birth, one of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the conflict.

In the swirling world of radical Palestinian politics, shot through with rifts and splinters, he helped found and then went on to lead the Palestine Liberation Front, a pro-Iraqi faction within the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), after breaking away from another hardline movement, the PFLP-General Command.

His PLF is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation, a designation also slapped on it by the European Union.

Seen as one of the instigators of the Achille Lauro operation, in which Jewish US tourist Leon Klinghoffer was murdered and his body dumped in the Meditarranean, he was sentenced in absentia by Italy to five life sentences.

Italy is now seeking his extradition, although the authorities are unsure as to where to send the demand after his arrest by US Marines in occupied Baghdad.

Abu Abbas had long lived in exile, although under the terms of an interim bilateral accord between Israel and the Palestinians in 1995, he was allowed to return to the Palestinian territories for PLO meetings after renouncing calls for the destruction of Israel in 1996.

That accord was invoked by Palestinian leaders Wednesday to accuse the United States of violating its terms, although Washington was only a co-signatory as a witness and was not expressly bound not arrest suspects of killing US citizens.

Apart from the spectacular hijack of the cruise ship on which Klinghoffer was celebrating his 36th wedding anniversary, the PLF carried out a number of high-profile raids.

The PLF's 1990 attack on a seaside hotel in Tel Aviv prompted the first Bush administration to sever contacts with the PLO. The contacts were resumed with the 1993 Oslo accords.

Abbas also devised unconventional methods of attack, including the use of hang-gliders.

In 1979, the PLF had attacked a residential home in Nahariya, near the northern border with Lebanon, in which four people were killed.

Having jumped on the peace camp bandwagon, he said on several occasions he wanted to distance himself from his violent past, although in his most recent statements to the media in October 2000, at the start of the Palestinian uprising, he pledged to resume attacks on Israel.

Last year he told the New York Times in Baghdad that he had no links to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and condemned the September 11, 2001 attacks by the group on New York and Washington.

But US Central Command, which is directing the war in Iraq, said in a statement his capture "removes a portion of the terror network supported by Iraq and represents yet another victory in the global war on terrorism".

Centcom spokesman Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks said later his arrest in Baghdad proved Washington's thesis that Saddam Hussein's regime supported terrorism. US marines reported the discovery of bomb-making equipment at what was described as a training camp operated by a faction of the PLF.

A Palestinian source told CNN television that Abbas was arrested after being turned away from Iraq's border with Syria, where he has spent some ofbhis years of exile.

Klinghoffer's daughters Lisa and Ilsa, said in a statement quoted in the Israeli media that they were "delighted that the murderous terrorist Abu Abbas is in US custody. While we personally seek justice for our father's murder, the larger issue is terrorism".

SPACE.WIRE