Two gunmen 'unbalanced’

Press, 22 February 1978, Page 8

Two gunmen 'unbalanced’

NZPA Cairo The two Arabs charged with killing the “Al Ahram” editor in a hotel lobby in Nicosia, Cyprus, were “stupid in the extreme and psychologically unbalanced,” one of the men they held hostage has said. After killing the editor, Yusef Sebai, on Saturday, the two negotiated with Cypriot officials and left the eastern Mediterranean island aboard a Cypriot jetliner with 15 hostages. The plane finally landed in the East African nation of Djibouti with its fuel nearly exhausted after being refused permission to land in other countries, and later it returned to Cyprus. “They asked us to contact the Presidents of Algeria, Libya, and South Yemen, I hoping to get permission to land,” said Hussein Rizk, the slain editor’s secretary and one of the hostages. “It was we who persuaded them to return to Cyprus. We told them it was the

: best place for them, that they would get passports and would be able to leave.” Mr Rizk said it was unclear who ordered Sebai’s killing. “One of the killers told me, I love Yusef Sibai and I read all his stories,” Mr Rizk said. He said it. was Arab nationalism that, had made them kill Sibai. “The two were unbalanced, very excitable. They had obviously met just before their mission,” he said. “They kept contfadicting each other and arguing over who gave the orders. Mr Rizk said that one of them wore a belt full of explosives. He said the hoslages were allowed to walk about freely in the plane as it flew over the Red Sea.

Mr Rizk praised Abul Mohsen Abu Maizer, an official of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and one of the hostages, for “dealing with them psychologically and drawing off all their aggressiveness.”