U.S. Congressman survived one attack

Press, 21 November 1978, Page 8

U.S. Congressman survived one attack

International.

.XZ PA

Georgetown, Guyana

1 he American Congressman murdered in a hail

of bullets with four other Americans in a remote i Guyanan religious commune on Saturday had earlier been attacked by a man armed with a knife at the settlement.

According to one report, Mr Ryan was saved by two

lawyers representing the sect, including the famed Kennedy conspiracy lawyer, Mark Lane, who grabbed the attacker's knife. The attacker was cut in the ensuing scuffle and Mr Ryan’s shirt was' drenched with the attacker’s blood.

' Shaken by what he 'thought was his successful I narrow escape, Mr Ryan 'said as he reached the airstrip: “I wouldn’t be alive if lit was not for Mark Lane.” 'Mr Ryan lived only a few minutes longer. Mr Ryan, the journalists with him, and relatives of I sect members, had been investigating the commune after reports that some people were being detained against their will. The commune was set up near Kaituma by an American organisation known as the People’s Temple. Earlier, the visiting party; had been given what one journalist called a Cook’s Tour of the commune, complete with a rock band and singing, but in the course of the tour some sect members had passed notes to the visitors asking to go with them when they left and as the atmosphere got worse arguments had broken out.

As they prepared to leave, Mr Ryan and the others were cut down when about a dozen gunmen, sect members apparently angered that) other me’mbers were going; to leave with the Congressman's group, opened fire indiscriminately. Some of the wounded, were later shot in the back of the head at close range. The gunmen had shot out the tyres of one of the two aircraft at. Kaituma.

Mr Ryan, who had bloodstains on his shirt, had warned one of the pilots that there might be trouble. Eyewitnesses said the trouble at Kaituma started when Mr Ryan arid his team, who had been in-

ivestigating complaints that sect, members were detained against their will and subject to ritual beatings, were about to return to Georgetown.

| Some people, presumably 'sect members, turned up in a tractor-drawn trailer and demanded to be taken back to Georgetown, they said. A series of arguments and scuffles developed, in one of which Mr Ryan was apparently stabbed. Then a dozen gunmen emerged and shot out the tyres of one plane. They separated the visiting party from the others and {opened fire, killing five people and wounding eight, i Those who died were Mr [Ryan, Don Harris, a reporter, and Robert Brown, a [cameraman, of the National, [Broadcasting Company, a! I San Francisco “Examiner”: [ reporter, Gregory Robinson, I land Patricia Park, believed! Ito have been a temple member.

The eight injured, who included three reporters and Mr Ryan’s aide, Miss Jackie Speiler, were later evacuated in a specially-equipped plane flown out by the United States.

One American, as yet un-

identified, has been arrested and a Georgetown source [said several others had been itaken into custody. | Before the shooting the : People’s Temple had issued a statement suggesting that Mr Ryan had found the charges against it unjustified. It quoted him as saying: “All that is being done here is significant, valuable, and worth-while.” Robert Flick of N.B.C. News said that after the initial shooting the assailants walked up to the wounded and shot them in the head with shotguns. That was how Mr Ryan and Mr Harris had died, he said. In an account broadcast in the United States, he said he. ’saw soldiers guarding thel wreckage of a Guyanese plane that had recently [crashed at the airstrip and [ran to them for help. Flick ■ said the soldiers refused to 'intervene.

“The Congressman . . . dived behind the opposite wheel of the airplane from the gunfire and was hit almost immediately,” Flick said. Then he was shot by people walking through with their guns. He said the others died the same way.