The body of a murdered Israeli soldier who Palestinian terrorists pretended to be holding alive as a hostage was-found buried in a Moslem cemetery in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, The discovery and the confession of a local Arab from Rafah to complicity in the crime ended the 10-month mystery that had surrounded the disappearance of Cpl. David Shamir.
Shamir was last seen in January waiting to hitch a ride at a crossroad near Rafah. He vanished without trace until several weeks ago when terrorists claimed on the Beirut radio that Shamir was their prisoner. They produced his identity card as proof.
The soldier’s family hoped that Israel would agree to release imprisoned terrorists in exchange for Shamir, as it had done last spring to obtain the release of another Israeli soldier held by terrorsts in Lebanon. But security circles were skeptical and continued their investigation.
It led to the cemetery and to the arrest of the Arab who admitted that he was one of three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who had offered Shamir a ride last January. Once in their car, they stabbed him to death, stole his documents and buried his body. The documents were smuggled to terrorist headquarters in Beirut where it was apparently decided to use them as bait. Shamir was buried with full military honors yesterday.
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