Israeli officials here hold Libya responsible for the terrorist attack at the Istanbul airport last Wednesday in which four passengers of a Tel Aviv-bound. El Al plane were killed and 24 injured, despite. Libya’s denial of any connection with the assault.
The officials said that the Istanbul attack was made by members of a terrorist group led by Wadia Haddad, a splinter group from George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Haddad group was also responsible for the hijacking of the Air France plane to Uganda, also with Libya’s blessings. Meanwhile Israel said today that it will not seek the extradition of the two terrorists contrary to earlier reports that it was seeking to do so. (See separate story p. 3).
The charge against Libya received corroboration from a passport belonging to one of the two arrested terrorists and the flight tickets of both which were included, apparently by mistake, with the returned luggage and documents of the Israelis injured in the attack. The passport was issued in Kuwait to a Jassem Abdallah El-Da-wait, whose profession was listed as a student and date of birth as 1964.
The flight tickets were issued in Tripoli, Libya, and were routed Tripoli-Rome-Istanbul-Baghdad. The officials said this indicated that the two terrorists stayed at Rome airport as passengers-in-transit and were therefore not searched, assuming a search was conducted at the port of embarkation.
Even in Istanbul, it was noted, the two killers were considered as transit passengers which enabled them to move freely in the airport section holding travelers about to embark on another plane. The passport also had visa and entry and exit stamps of Syria, Jordan and Libya, which the terrorists visited before boarding the plane that brought them to Istanbul.
OTHER DEAD IDENTIFIED
Criticisms were voiced against Israeli officials over two developments related to the assault. One target was the Foreign Ministry which until Friday did not officially report that two of the slain victims — one erroneously identified as a third terrorist and one not identified at all — were Israeli passengers. Shlomo Avineri, the Foreign Ministry’s director general, coordinated, all information from Turkey on the disaster.
The victims were finally identified as Shlomo Weisbach of Haifa, and Ernest Eliash of Petach Tikvah. Weisbach, a tourist guide in charge of Israelis visiting Rumania, was returning from a visit to West Germany. Eliash, his wife and a brother and sister-in-law were members of an Israeli group which had toured the Balkans and were on the El Al plane.
Weisbach came to Palestine from Rumania in 1940 as a youth aliyah ward. He initially worked on Jewish National Fund reclamation projects and later as a driver for the Egged bus cooperative. He is survived by his mother, his wife and three children Eliash migrated to Israel from Hungary. His son and daughter-in-law were flown by El Al to Istanbul to make arrangements for the Eliash funeral.
Two slain passengers identified earlier were Harold Rosenthal, an aide to Sen. Jacob Javits (R. NY) and Yakao Hiramo, a Japanese tourist guide in charge of a group of tourists from Japan who were en route to Israel. Avnieri and Foreign Minister Yigal Allon sent condolences Friday to Javits on the murder of his aide.
NAMES OF INJURED RELEASED
On Friday, an El Al plane brought home the injured passengers who had been hospitalized in Istanbul. Ambulances were on hand at Ben Gurion Airport and the injured persons were removed on stretchers.
The slightly injured victims were listed as Itzhak Kastel, Nissim Levi, Margalit Nir, Aharona Mannossevitz, Hanna Merom and Miryam Levi. The seriously injured Israelis were listed as Shabtai Levi, Eliyahu Mannessovitz, Sassoon Cohen, Violet Eliash, whose husband was one of the two slain Israelis, and Sara Levi. One of the seriously injured victims, who remained at French Hospital in Istanbul, was Yonat Mannessovitz, 11.
TREATMENT OF INJURED CRITICIZED
The other criticism was aimed at what was considered a too hasty expression of appreciation by Israeli officials to Turkish authorities. It was learned over the weekend that while the Turkish security personnel in the incident acted promptly and courageously in stopping and seizing the two terrorists, personnel of the government hospitals where many of the injured Israelis were taken were somewhat less than sympathetic to the injured victims. It was emphasized that treatment of injured Israelis taken to French Hospital in Istanbul was excellent.
Behira Kastel, whose husband and sister were among the injured Israelis, said on her return to Israel Friday that she had been separated from her husband after the assault. She said her husband was taken to one hospital while she escorted her sister to a Turkish hospital where, she said, the medical team simply laughed at them and for many hours did not tend to a bleeding leg wound of the sister.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
