Ibrahim A-Tawil, the deposed former Mayor of El Bireh, has challenged the claim by Israeli army Capt. Aharon Gilla that he did not know that Jewish terrorists had planted a bomb in the mayor’s car in June, 1980 and could not have warned Druze border police sapper Suleiman Hirbawi who lost his eyesight trying to defuse the lethal device.
Gilla is one of two Israel Defense Force officers implicated in the car bombings that maimed Mayors Bassam Shaka of Nablus and Karim Khallaf of Ramallah four years ago. Tawil was also a target of the assassination attempts. Gilla and Maj. Shlomo Levytan have been indicted but will be tried separately from the 22 suspected members of a Jewish terrorist underground whose trial began here last Sunday.
Gilla maintained that he escorted Hirbawi to Tawil’s garage and therefore could not have known the car was booby-trapped because his own life would have been at risk. But police office Shimon Sharvit testified in Jerusalem District Court today that Tawil told him at the time that Hirbawi entered the garage alone, not escorted by Gilla.
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