Ex-Green Beret’s links with Libya

Press, 2 June 1981, Page 8

Ex-Green Beret’s links with Libya

NZPA-Reuter New York A former Green Beret American Special Forces soldier recently charged in last autumn’s (northern) attempted murder of a prominent Libyan dissident in Colorado, spent three months in Libya last summer (northern) on official business for the Libyan Government, according to an official involved in the investigation. In addition, investigators on the case have established links between the former Green Beret and a former Central Intelligence Agency agent who is already under Federal indictment for using American mercenaries to run a terrorist training programme for the Libyan President (Colonel Muammar Gadaffi). The former Green Beret. Eugene Tafoya, aged 45, of Truth or Consequences. NewMexico. is awaiting trial in Fort Collins, Colorado, on charges that he conspired and attempted to murder Faisal Zagallai, a Libyan graduate student at Colorado

State University and a leader among anti-Gadaffi Libyans in the United States. Tafoya is being held in lieu of ?1 million bail and no trial date has been set.

The shooting of Mr Zagallai and the arrest in April of Tafoya have taken on international significance in the wake of reports that the arrest served as the catalyst for the Reagan Administra-. tion's recent decision to close the Libyan Embassy in Washington as part of an effort to expose the Libyan Government’s use of terrorism as a political instrument. Tripoli has announced, for example, that it ordered the shooting of .Mr Zagallai. Mr Zagallai was shot twice in the head on October’l4 by a man who gained access to his home by identifying himself as a job recruiter. Mr Zagallai survived the shooting, but was blinded in one eye, and carries a ,22-cal bullet in.his skull.

Tafoya, a decorated 25year veteran of the Marines and the Special Forces, as

well as a member of a prominent New Mexico family, w-as arrested at his home on April 22 after a pistol found near the scene of the shooting was traced to him. Among the items confiscated in the raid on Tafoya's home were four passports in his name, according to an official involved in the investigation.

One of the passports showed that Tafoya had visited Libya three times last year, twice before, and once after the shooting of Mr Zagallai, the official said. The longest of the three visits lasted from July to September. According to the official, the passport carries the word “mission” in Arabic, which designates that the holder is in the country at the invitation of the Government, and on official Government business.

What Tafoya was doing in Libya and whom he met have not been disclosed. But investigators are looking into the possibility that while he was there Tafoya conferred

with a former C.I.A. agent, Edwin Wilson. Wilson and another former C.I.A. man, Francis Terpil, were indicted in April last year by a Washington Federal grand jury on charges of illegally supplying explosives and training terrorists for the Libyan Government. Both have fled the country to avoid prosecution, and Wilson is now in Libya. Found in Tafoya’s house at the time of his arrest was Wilson’s business card. This was for the Tripoli office of a Swiss-based company that Wilson controls, with its telephone number. Also on the card were the phone numbers for businesses Wilson controlled in London and Washington. The Tafoya investigation is being conducted by the Fort Collins Police Department and by several offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including agents at Fort Collins, Albuquerque, Denver, Washington and Alexandria, Virginia.