NEW YORK -- A 62-year-old Croatian hijacker whose planted bomb killed a New York city police officer has been deported home after spending 31 years behind bars, federal authorities announced Thursday.

Croatian terrorist Zvonko Busic had left a bomb inside a Grand Central Terminal locker in 1976 that killed NYPD officer Brian Murray, 27, and wounded three other officers, including one blinded in an eye.

That year, Busic led the hijacking of a TWA flight from LaGuardia bound for Chicago, falsely claiming five bombs were on board. Nobody was hurt when the plane landed in Paris where no explosives were found and Busic and four cohorts surrendered.

Immigration officials said they deported Busic, a permanent U.S. resident, to Zagreb on Wednesday, the day after he was paroled from federal prison in Indiana.

In the 1970s, Busic said he committed terrorist acts to spotlight Croatia's fight for independence from then communist Yugoslavia. Considered a hero by some Croatians, he was convicted in 1977 of conspiracy and air piracy resulting in death and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. A decade later he escaped from an upstate prison but was captured the next day.

His parole earlier this month drew the ire of Murray's widow, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and New York Senator Charles Schumer.