Terrorist deported after 26 years

TORONTO - A Palestinian convicted of hijacking an airliner in Greece in 1968 has been deported from Canada 26 years after entering the country using an alias, the immigration minister said Monday.

Jason Kenney said the case "made a mockery of Canada's generosity and our fair immigration system for 21/2 decades."

The minister said Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammad made a false refugee claim in 1987. The government learned a year later that he was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and had participated in a terrorist attack on an El Al airplane in which an Israeli citizen was killed. Kenney said Mohammad and another man stormed a plane and threw grenades and fired at civilians.

Mohammad was convicted in Greece in 1970 of manslaughter and sentenced to 17 years in prison, but he was freed before completing his sentence as part of a deal to resolve another hijacking.