Argentine Authorities Break Up Terrorist Ring Trained by the PLO

Argentine authorities have broken up a local terrorist network that was trained by the Palestine Liberation Organization to assassinate high Argentine government officials, it was revealed here. According to the Latin Americans Affairs Department of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, two high Argentine military officials announced that the ring had been dissolved before it could carry out its death mission.

Gen. Cristino Nicolaide, commander-in-chief of the Army’s Third Division, and Col. Miguel Cabrera, chief of the division’s intelligence unit, said the terrorists were trained in Lebanon by the PLO. The terrorists, these officials said, made one attempt last fall to carry out their assassination plans designed to generate a climate of terror and insecurity in Argentina. On that occasion, according to Rabbi Morton Rosenthal, director of ADL’s Latin American Affairs Department, the would-be assassins bombed the home of the Deputy Finance Minister, Dr. Guillermo Walter Klein. He and members of his family escaped death despite the fact that they were trapped in the rubble.

The breakup of the Argentine terrorist ring, Rosenthal said, “is the latest indication of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s tentacles spreading through Latin America.” Latin American governments, which are being pressured by Arab states to permit the opening of PLO offices, will find “Trojan horses of international terrorism and subversion in their midst,” he added.