Guerrilla shot in Warsaw

Press, 7 August 1981, Page 6

Guerrilla shot in Warsaw

NZPA-Reuter Warsaw A Palestinian guerrilla chief said by Israel to have masterminded the Munich massacre has been shot and seriously wounded in Warsaw.

A representative of the Palestine Liberation Organisation said that Abu Daoud, a leader of the powerful Fatah guerrilla group, was gunned down in the coffee lounge of the city’s top international hotel last Saturday. He was hit by five bullets in his mouth, chest, and intestines, and doctors said it would be more than a week before they could predict his chances of recovery. They said he was in a grave condition but was in no immediate danger. A P.L.O. representative in Warsaw. Fouad Mahmoud Yassin, said there had been one assailant, whom he believed to be an Israeli agent.

News of the attack, the first of its kind in the Soviet bloc, had been released earlier. But it had not been linked with a prominent Palestinian and it was only yesterday that the story began to unfold.

Witnesses said Abu Daoud was alone when he was shot and a girl sitting some distance from his table was also wounded. They said he got up and staggered into the hotel lobby, leaving a trail of blood, before collapsing.

The witnesses said the gunman walked out calmly and was picked up by a car outside the hotel. Abu Daoud, whose full name is Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, was said by Israel to have planned the attack in which 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team were killed in Munich in 1972. But Mr Yassin said: "I can state quite categorically that this was not true. He was engaged in guerrilla activity, obviously, but in the (Israeli)occupied territories.”

He said Abu Daoud had been in transit in the Polish capital; but he had no other information. Sources at the Victoria Intercontinental Hotel where

the shooting took place said the guerrilla chief had booked in for about five days under the assumed name of Tarik Mahdi. Abu Daoud was arrested in France in January. 1977, but he was freed four days later and fled to Algiers. The decision to release him. on the grounds that formal confirmation of a West German extradition request had not been received, was condemned by Israel. An Israeli biography of Abu Daoud says he was born in 1938 in a suburb of Jerusalem where he taught before joining Fatah. He became an intelligence officer and later a militia commander in Lebanon. Abu Daoud was arrested by the Jordanians in 1973 on sabotage charges and sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment, and he was subsequently released under an amnesty for Palestinian guerrillas.

“As-Safir," a Left-wing Beirut daily, said yesterday that Fatah had sent a delegation to Warsaw led by Amin Al-Hindi. a senior security official, to investigate the shooting.

In Jerusalem. Israel denied responsibility for the shooting. "We have only one word for that — rubbish." said Uri Porat. a spokesman for the Prime Minister. “Any charge that Israel was responsible is absolute nonsense."

He added jokingly: “Besides. we don’t have anybody working there" referring to Poland, where the shooting took place. Israel and Poland have no diplomatic ties and few Israelis visit there.

Several years ago an Israeli “hit squad” reported to have been set up after the Munich massacre was said to have killed a number of Palestinians in various cities in Western Europe. It was said to have been disbanded when it inadvertently murdered a waiter in Norway who had no connection at all with the guerrilla movement.