Jews sentenced in Oslo

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33450, 4 February 1974, Page 17

Jews sentenced in Oslo

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) OSLO, February 3. An Oslo court has imposed prison sentences on five of the six Jews accused of complicity in the machine-gun killing of a suspected Arab guerrilla in a quiet Norwegian ski resort—the victim of an Arab-Israeli underground war on the European continent.

The prosecution attributed the blame for the death of Ahmed Bouchiki, aged 30, a Moroccan waiter, to Mossad the Israeli intelligence agency, which, it was alleged, had mistaken him for someone else. The man the Israelis were really after, it was said, was Ali Hassan Salame, the Black September leader who was behind the 1972 massacre at Munich of 11 Israeli Olympic sportsmen. Mr Bouchiki died in a hail of machine-gun fire on July 21, as he left a cinema with his wife in the town of Lillehammer. The prosecution alleged that the six Jews on trial were members of a band of 15 Israelis and Jewish sympathisers who had tracked the Moroccan down. The six accused Jews, two of them women, had been in custody for six months while the police investigated the background to the killing of Mr Bouchiki, who was riddled with 13 bullets by two men who have been since sought by Interpol. Two of the accused, Sylvia Rafael, of South Africa, and Abraham Gehmer, first secretary of the Israeli Embassy in Paris, both aged 36, were found guilty of complicity in the murder, of espionage on behalf of Israel, and of entering Norway on forged pass-i ports. They were each sent to[ prison for five vears and a! half. A Danish-born Jew, Dam Aerbel, aged 27, received a; sentence of five years for! complicity in the murder; a Swedish-born defendant, Ethel Marianne Glandikov, aged 30, was sentenced to two years and a half for espionage and negligent manslaughter; and an Israeli, Zwi Steinberg, aged 36, was sentenced to one year for espionage. The sixth accused, Michael Dorf, aged 27, another Israeli, was acquitted. Passing sentence, the Chairman of the Court (Mr Erling Haugen), said that the (Court accepted that the death! ;Of Mr Bouchiki should be! tseen against the background ; | of the bitter Arab-Israeli conflict. but murder and violence; on Norwegian territory, re-1 gardless of motive, was un-'

acceptable, and must be punished. Defence counsel’s main submission had been that the defendants had been engaged only in tracking down their quarry, and did not even know he was to be killed.