PETITION FOR GRANTING PAROLE TO BUSIC CIRCULATED IN SPLIT

SPLIT, May 15 (Hina) - A petition for paroling Zvonko Busic, a Croatian citizen serving a life prison sentence in the US for hijacking, was circulated in Split on Wednesday morning. In 1976, Busic and a group of Croatian activists planted a bomb at the Kennedy airport, creating a diversion which enabled them to hijack a plane. The hijackers did not carry any weapons aboard the plane, but a police officer was killed defusing the bomb. According to Busic's wife Juliane, Eden-Busic, the objective of the hijacking was to force the leading newspapers to print a leaflet describing the oppression of the Croatian people in Communist Yugoslavia. Under a Croatian-American agreement on the transfer of prisoners, Croatian citizens serving sentences in US prisons may be transferred to Croatia to serve the rest of their sentence there. Busic's request to that effect was, however, denied. Busic's accomplices were all granted parole six years ago. (hina) as 152023 MET may 96