A Turkish court has sentenced three members of an Islamic terrorist group to 15 years and a fine for the January 1993 attack against a member of the Istanbul Jewish community, the World Jewish Congress has reported.
The attackers, members of an organization called the Persevering Workers of Islam, were convicted for the attempted murder of Jak Kamhi, a prominent businessman and leading figure in the Turkish Jewish community.
The men were part of a heavily armed five-person squad that fired rockets as Kamhi’s car while he was driving to work in Istanbul.
The three men were also convicted of membership in the Islamic organization, a group that is illegal in Turkey. They admitted they were trained for the attack in Iran.
At the time of the attack, Kamhi, 69, who is a member of the executive committee of the World Sephardi Federation, was driving an armored car with personal guards, who returned the gunmen’s fire.
The attackers escaped but left behind an anti-tank rocket, assault rifles, pistols and had grenades.
The attack on Kamhi was the third attacks in less than a year on Jews or Jewish institutions in Turkey, a secular but mostly Islamic country that has historically been a safe haven for Jews.
Previously, terrorists killed the security chief at the Israeli Embassy in Ankara by booby-trapping his car. That attack took place two days after Israel and Turkey established full diplomatic relations last year.
A week before that attack, two assailants hurled hand grenades at Istanbul’s Neve Shalom Synagogue.
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.
