French police are convinced that the extremist terrorist gang headed by Abu Nidal was responsible for the series of attacks on Jewish targets in Western Europe during the summer of 1982 as well as the murder of Issam Sartawi, a Palestine Liberation Organization moderate who was gunned down in Lisbon last April 10.
The police reached that conclusion after an investigating magistrate and the chief inspector of the Paris police visited Al Awat Youssef, the prime suspect in the Sartawi killing who is being held in Lisbon. He is an admitted member of the Nidal gang.
Youssef’s forged Moroccan passport showed that he was in France from July 25-August 10, 1982. On August 9, a terrorist gang launched a grenade attack on the Jo Goldenberg restaurant on the Rue Des Rosiers in the old Jewish quarter of Paris, killing six persons and wounding 22.
Youssef is also a suspect in the terrorist assault on the main synagogue in Rome on October 9, 1982 in which a child was killed and several people wounded. Earlier, the Abu Nidal gang, a breakaway faction of the PLO, was linked to the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov, Israel’s Ambassador to London, in June, 1982. Abu Nidal has declared war on Israelis, European Jews and Palestinian moderates.
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