A 23-year-old Druze was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment today for mailing letter-bombs last winter to President Nixon, U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird. The sentence was pronounced by a military tribunal in Kuneitra on Adib Yousouf Halabi of Majdal Shams village on the Golan Heights, headquarters of a Druze spy ring in the service of Syria. Another Druze, Shaquib Abu Jabel. 24, son of the spy ring’s leader, was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for membership in an espionage organization.
The letter-bombs were discovered in the Kiryat Shemona post office near the Lebanese border While two other Druze implicated in the affair confessed earlier, Halabi pleaded not guilty. His conviction followed a police reconstruction of the crime in which the accused traced the route he followed from the point where he picked up the letter-bombs to the mail drop at the post office.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
