Snatched Prisoners Face Trial

By Daniel Billingham

Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday that six Palestinians grabbed from a West Bank prison will be charged and tried by Israel, despite Palestinian claims that the arrests were illegal.

Israel says five of the men seized in the day-long raid in Jericho on Tuesday were involved in the 2001 assassination of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi.

The sixth is the suspected financier of an illegal weapons shipment to the Palestinian Authority several years ago.

Israeli legal experts had said some legal hurdles would still have to be cleared before Israel would decide whether to put the six on trial. But Olmert said there were no doubts Israel would push forward with its case.

The captured prisoners include Ahmed Saadat, leader of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which claimed responsibility for Zeevi’s killing.

Israel’s chief prosecutor is scheduled to meet legal advisers and defence officials in the coming days to determine whether to try Saadat and the other suspects in the Zeevi killing in a military or civil court, a justice ministry spokeswoman said.

The four gunmen believed to be directly involved in the assassination were convicted in the past by a Palestinian court, and Israeli legal experts said they would have to sort out first whether they can be tried again. In contrast, Saadat was never convicted or tried by Palestinian authorities.

Zeevi, an ultranationalist who advocated the expulsion of Palestinians from Israelicontrolled territory, was shot dead in the hallway of a Jerusalem hotel in October 2001, and the PFLP claimed responsibility at the time.

Saadat and four PFLP activists directly involved in the killing were eventually arrested by Palestinian police.

In April 2002, a makeshift court, in which Palestinian policemen acted as judges and lawyers, hastily convened in then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s West Bank compound, sentenced the four to prison terms ranging from one to 18 years.

Saadat was not charged, but Arafat ordered Saadat to be held in the Jericho jail.

The sixth man apprehended on Tuesday, Fouad Shubaki, was the key suspect in a weapons-smuggling affair.

Palestinian militants yesterday released the last four foreigners they were holding, a day after seizing them to protest at the Israeli military raid on the prison in Jericho.

Palestinian security officials escorted the four hostages into the headquarters of the Palestinian preventive security agency in Gaza City.