Zvonko Busic served 32 years in US prisons for the 1976 air piracy and the death of a police officer who died while trying to defuse a bomb Busic and a few other Croatian emigrants left in a locker at a New York train station together with a leaflet on Croatia's struggle for independence which the Busic group wanted to be published.

Busic was released from the Terre Haute federal prison in July 2008 after a four-member commission unanimously voted to grant parole to him. After that he was transferred to Croatia.

In September 1976, in a bid to promote Croatia's fight for independence from the then communist Yugoslavia, Busic organized the hijacking of a Boeing 727 with 92 passengers aboard on a flight from New York's La Guardia Airport to Chicago. Busic, his wife Julienne and another three men - Petar Matanic, Slobodan Vlasic and Frane Pesut - demanded publication of the leaflet, which they left in a locker at a New York train station. To reinforce their demands, they packed an explosive device with the leaflet. Although the hijackers had informed the police about the bomb, police officer Brian Murray was killed while trying to defuse it.

After dropping the leaflets over London and Paris, the hijackers landed in Paris where they turned themselves in to the police without negotiation.

Busic and his wife Julienne were sentenced to life imprisonment by a US court in the first half of 1977.

Busic was eligible for parole after serving ten years of his sentence and his wife after serving eight years. His wife was released in 1990.

The other three hijackers -- Matanic, Vlasic and Pesut -- were sentenced to 30 years in prison, and they were paroled and released in the meantime.

In 2006, a US parole commission rejected Busic's application to be paroled. However in 2008, he was granted release.

Busic was born in the village in of Gorica in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1946.