A 27-year-old member of the Palestine Liberation Organization was sentenced today by a Haifa court to 20 years in prison on charges of armed infiltration. Samir Shafik Darwish, who was captured May 8, disguised as a British subject, confessed to the charges when he was arraigned on July 13.
The prosecution said that when Darwish was arrested, he was carrying a collection of 122 plastic explosives, detonators, a specially equipped camera, a gun and orders to use the explosives to create destruction in Israeli cities. He also was reported to have had a transistor radio. When police asked him what he intended to use it for he replied he wanted to listen on Kol Israel Radio reporting on the results of his assignment. On the day of his arrest, Damascus Radio triumphantly announced that PLO members had exploded a bomb in a Haifa movie theater, causing “thousands of casualties.” That apparently had been Darwish’s first assignment.
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