Abu Eain who was involved in the bombing that killed two young boys and injured more than 36 civilians in Tiberias, Israel on May 14, 1979. In this case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit denied Abu Eain's political offense exception on the grounds that the "indiscriminate bombing of a civilian populace is not recognized as a protected political act". Reactions British Conservative MP Jill Knight called the ruling "a seal of approval to murder, maiming and terrorism". Assistant Attorney General Stephen S. Trott of the U.S. Justice Department Criminal Division said he was "outraged" because it made the United States legal system complicit in terrorism. The administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan called Spizzo's finding "fundamentally flawed" because in it "murder and assault are effectively sanctioned as a form of political activity in a democracy." Most major U.S. newspaper editorials, none of which actually attended Doherty's hearing, responded to Spizzo's decision with sensationalist attacks. For example, the Wall Street Journal said the political offense exception would be used to protect Pope John Paul II's attempted assassin Mehmet Ali Ağca, "whose attempted assassination of the Pope has behind it the organization, discipline and command structure of the Soviet Government." The New York Post stated the ruling would make killing a Supreme Court justice a political offense. The Chicago Tribune accused Sprizzo of misusing the power to forbid extradition. The New York Daily News asserted "Spizzo would presumably call [the bombings of the Brighton hotel and department stores and restaurants] 'political' acts ... It's a ridiculous argument." Belfast author James Holland noted the decision "had come at the time when the [Reagan] administration was trying to present a united front against 'international terrorism' and the idea that a U.S. judicial officer....should distinguish between some politically motivated violent acts and others was obviously outrageous." He wrote: What was conveniently ignored, in the torrents of near-hysteria abuse directed at the judge, was the careful and conservative nature of his decision. It represented a limiting of the scope of the political-offense exception to actually exclude most of the kinds of crimes that the Reagan government and the popular press were accusing it of glorifying or excusing. The angry reaction had another aspect. In [the] future, any judge or magistrate contemplating finding in favor of the political-exception defense could not help being intimidated by the prospect of the denunciations and controversy