Claim fuels furor

Press, 18 June 1986, Page 10

Claim fuels furor

NZPA-Reuter Tel Aviv Renewed controversy erupted in Israel yesterday over the killing of two Arab guerrillas captured in a bus hijacking in 1984.

State television and all Israeli newspapers published identical reports quoting a judicial source as alleging that the head of the internal security service, Shin Bet, ordered the hijackers beaten to death after they had been interrogated. A Right-wing parliamentarian, Ehud Olmert, accused the former Attor-ney-General, Yitzhak Zamir, dismissed after ordering a police inquiry into the killings, of being the source and said he had violated state security.

Mr Zamir acknowledged he had discussed the case with journalists at a farewell party but said some of his comments, attributed to a judicial source, had been reported inaccurately. He did not deny saying the Shin Bet chief, Avraham Shalom, had ordered the Arabs killed or describing their deaths as a lynching. Mr Shalom has not commented publicly on the case. Mr Zamir’s successor, Yosef Harish, is due to decide this week whether to pursue the probe. He has made it clear that any inquiry must be held in secrecy to protect Shin Bet.

The two guerrillas were part of a four-man squad that commandeered a civilian bus from Tel Aviv to Israeli-occupied Gaza in April 1984.