ZAGREB, Croatia – A man who served 32 years in a U.S. prison for hijacking a plane and planting a bomb that killed a policeman returned home to Croatia on Thursday after being paroled.

Zvonko Busic, 62, was welcomed at the airport by several hundred supporters, who consider him a national hero who fought for Croatia's independence from communist Yugoslavia long before it was achieved in 1991.

Busic led a group that hijacked a TWA jetliner in 1976 as it left New York's LaGuardia Airport. They forced the plane to fly to Montreal, London and Paris, planning to drop leaflets to draw attention to communist repression of national and religious beliefs.

Police finally shot out the plane's tires and persuaded the five – who were not armed – to surrender. But a bomb they stashed in a locker at New York's Grand Central Terminal exploded when police tried to defuse it, killing one officer and blinding another.

Busic was convicted in 1977 of air piracy and sentenced to life in prison, but he was granted parole earlier this month. His associates had been freed earlier.

As a condition of his parole, Busic was deported to Croatia and barred from returning to the United States.

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly had called Busic's parole “outrageous.”

Arriving at Zagreb airport, Busic told the gathered crowd that it was “the happiest day” in his life “to return to my free homeland.”

His supporters, many waving Croatian flags and singing patriotic songs, also were delighted.

“He has paid for what he did,” said Branimir Pajdic, a 43-year-old music teacher. “He used radical means for the just cause, but those were radical times.”

Drazen Budisa, a former politician who spoke for the Busic family, said Busic “regretted his act.”