No hint of Prince’s fate

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33803, 27 March 1975, Page 19

No hint of Prince ’s fate

(pi.Z. Press Assn —Copyright) NEW YORK. March 26.

The people who knew the accused assassin of King Feisal of Saudi Arabia described him variously as a young man influenced by drugs, revenge, or politics, the Associated Press reported.

Radio Riyadh, the official Saudi broadcasting station, called him “mentally deranged.” The broadcast gave no hint of the Prince’s fate.

The accused assassin, Prince Feisal Ibn Musaed Ibn Abdul Aziz, aged 27, was the nephew of the King, the semi-official Egyptian newspaper, “Al Ahram,” said. His father was Prince Musaed Ibn Abdul Aziz, who was once imprisoned by his stepbrother, the late King, for killing someone. Prince Feisal Aziz went to the United States in the mid-1960s to study political science.

Professor Edward Rozek, one of his professors at the University of Colorado in Boulder, said yesterday that if the Prince was the assassin, he was probably motivated by drugs. Prince Feisal Aziz pleaded guilty in 1970 to conspiracy to sell LSD and was placed on probation for one year. After graduating from the University’ of Colorado. Prince Feisal Aziz enrolled in graduate courses at the University of California. Christine Surma, now 26, told the Boulder (Colorado) “Daily Camera” she lived with the Prince for five years until he returned home in July, 1974. The “Camera” quoted Miss Surma as saying that the Pnnce “became more radical” while he was at Berkeley, a centre of student activism in the 19605. Miss Surma told the Boulder "Camera” that Prince Feisal Aziz told her there was a lot of political animosity against his uncle, the King, but that he did not share that animosity. In Beirut. Agence FrancePresse reported that the Prince acted out of revenge, acording to an Arab diplomatic source quoted today in the Lebanese paper, “L’Orient Le' Jour.”

It said that the King’s; nephew acted in retaliation! for the shooting four years' ago of his brother Khaled Ibn Saad in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh. Emir Khaled, a religious fanatic, died in a clash with police when leading demonstrators in an attack on the capital’s television centre in a bid to halt musical programmes he found objectionable. “Al Anwar,” a newspaper close to the Egyptian Government, said that Prince Feisal had suffered a "crisis” six months ago and while on

;a visit to Cairo had paraded jabout in a field marshal’s [uniform. The newspaper backed the theory of the assassin’s “madness.” The pro-Iraqi daily “Al Moharrer” said “mystery” surrounded the killer and suggested the possibility of a “conflict among brothers for succession to the Throne.” It asked how Prince Feisal, “known to be a madman,” had been allowed into the King’s palace and could have had a weapon. The independent newspaper, “An Nahar,” noted

that there had been no news from the Saudi Arabian capital on the fate of the assassin. Asking if there were political motives behind the killing, it wondered | whether the assassin had himself been killed or arrested, or whether he had committed suicide.