Police sources confirmed Sunday that a leading Palestinian terrorist was arrested in West Germany more than two months ago with a device similar to the bomb believed to have destroyed Pan American Airways Flight 103 on Dec. 21.
They said Hafez Kassen Dalkamoni was found in possession of a radio equipped with plastic explosives and a barometer device that would trigger the explosives at a set altitude.
Thirteen other individuals, mostly Arabs, were arrested but released for lack of evidence.
Dalkamoni, identified as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, an extremist group headed by Ahmed Jabril, was seized along with several other Arabs who stored weapons and ammunition in an apartment near a Frankfurt synagogue.
Die Welt reported Sunday that Dalkamoni was arrested in Israel in 1968, but freed in 1979 in a prisoner exchange with the Jabril group.
It said that warrants were issued in October for two Arabs surnamed Ghandafrar and Cadora. They and Dalkamoni are suspected of attacking U.S. military convoys here in 1987 and 1988.
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