This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.International incidents An attack on the Saudi embassy in Khartoum took place on 1 March 1973.

After President Richard Nixon stated that he refused to negotiate with terrorists, and insisted that "no concessions" would be made, one Belgian and two U.S. hostages were killed.

[2] Palestinian gunmen burst into the embassy, and took Moore hostage, as well as fellow American Cleo Allen Noel, a Belgian diplomat, and two others.

[3] However, they revised their demands and insisted that ninety Arab militants being held by the Jordanian government must be freed within 24 hours or the hostages would be killed.

George Thompson (First Secretary of the US Embassy) was the American in charge on the ground (he did not attend the reception because he had to go to his son's parent-teacher conference that evening.)

He was instructed by Washington to hold them back because of the diplomatic implications of American soldiers invading Saudi sovergn soil in the foreign country of Sudan.

However, John R. Bolton, then assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, concluded in 1986 that legal jurisdiction for trying Arafat was lacking, as the appropriate statutory laws were not yet in force in 1973.