A Moslem fundamentalist group that claimed responsibility for killing a Jewish hostage last week, has threatened to kill three Lebanese Jews it is holding and to strike at others “on whom we may lay our hands.”
The group, calling itself the Organization of the Oppressed in the World, said it would take action if Lebanese Prisoners detained in southern Lebanon by the Israelis and their Christian allies were not freed, and if they did not cease what it called the bombardment of southern villages.
The statement, published yesterday in the Beirut daily, An Nahar, followed an Israeli radio quote last week of Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir saying Israel “will not respond to the demand of anyone abducting Jews in other countries,” although it would “seek to protect them to the best of our ability.”
Shamir’s message had been issued after the Organization of the Oppressed said it had killed a kidnapped Jew, 39-year-old Haim Cohen Halala, in retaliation for what they called the shelling of southern Shiite villages. The body of Halala, an Iranian Jew doing business in Lebanon, was found last Tuesday.
Last month, the Organization of the Oppressed, believed to be composed of Shiite activists, offered to release the three Lebanese Jews being held hostage if 300 Lebanese prisoners, mostly Shiites, in a southern village of Al Khiyam were freed.
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.
