Posted on 08/01/2002 7:52:29 AM PDT by freeperfromnj
JERUSALEM (AP) - A Palestinian arrested in connection with the deadliest suicide attack during 22 months of Mideast fighting was accused Thursday of also planning a mass cyanide poisoning of Israelis.
Abas al-Sayad, 36, was a leader of the Hamas Islamic group in the West Bank town of Tulkarem. He was charged Thursday with sending the suicide bomber who killed 29 Israelis as they celebrated the Jewish festival of Passover at the Park Hotel in the Israeli coastal resort of Netanya on March 27.
It was the deadliest suicide bomb attack in the 22 months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting and, after a wave of attacks that month, prompted Israel to launch "Operation Defensive Shield," in which troops swept into West Bank towns and occupied them for weeks.
Shortly before the bombing, al-Sayad obtained a bottle of cyanide from an accomplice, Tariq Zeidan, according to an indictment submitted Thursday to the Tel Aviv District Court.
After the explosion, al-Sayad informed Zeidan "that he intended to use the cyanide in the near future for a mass attack which he was planning," the indictment said.
Last month, the Israeli chief of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi, told parliament's security committee that the Park Hotel bomber was supposed to have released cyanide gas to enhance the killing power of his bomb, but didn't because of a technical mishap. No cyanide was found at the scene.
Cyanide gas can be fatal in an enclosed space.
So far, none of the Palestinian militant groups has carried out any mass poisoning of Israelis, although they have tried to carry out other acts of "megaterrorism," Israeli officials say.
In May, a bomb went off under a fuel truck that had been driven into Israel's biggest fuel and natural gas depot, which is in the middle of a crowded residential area. The fire was doused and no one was hurt.
But officials said that if the huge above-ground natural gas tanks had exploded, death and destruction would have swept over part of the Tel Aviv area, where about a third of Israel's 6 million people live.
Israeli security officials said they also discovered a plot in May to destroy the Azrieli Center in downtown Tel Aviv. The twin towers - the Israeli version of the World Trade Center - are 50 and 46 stories respectively. The officials said Palestinian militants planned to blow up a truck packed with explosives in the underground parking lot of the towers.
Israel's defense minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, has said that Salah Shehadeh, the Hamas military leader killed last week in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza, had planned a "mega-terror" attack, designed to kill hundreds of people by using a ton of explosives on a truck.
Hamas is opposed to the Oslo peace agreements and does not accept the principle of coexistence between a Palestinian state and Israel. Hamas maintains that Israel should be destroyed and a Palestinian state established on all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.
No date has been set for the beginning of al-Sayad's trial.
On a lighter note, did you see the GOP poll today showing Forrester over Torricelli 40-37%? And that was taken before the Ethics Committee rebuke. :-)
I did see it and I'm hopeful. I get the sense that New Jersey is slowly shifting a bit more to the right. There has also been a lot of negative press on McGreevy lately criticing his frivolous use of police helicopters to attend photo-ops and for the first time in years the homestead rebate checks aren't going out in August.
Israel had better be well-protected with all its guns loaded when the real action starts in the Middle East. It would not take much to virtually eradicate Israel as a nation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.