Benjamin Edoth, one of six Israelis seized in a bizarre international plot to blow up a Zambian bridge, was sentenced yesterday to six months in jail after admitting to the charges on which he was indicted.
The other Israeli defendants are Itzhak Berkowitz, a former member of the underground Stern group, Efraim Romen, Raphael Zorianne; an Iraqi-born member of the Stern group, whose name has not been disclosed; and the Israeli-born wife of an American who was arrested and arraigned in New York in the plot.
The arrests of the Israelis followed the disclosure last November that the Israeli Security Services had tipped off the United States and Zambia about the plot. The bridge is vital to the transport of Zambian copper and its destruction would have seriously affected the world supply of the metal. Edoth testified at his trial here that “our object was to blow up the bridge with the intention of making money — in which everybody was interested.”
Edoth also recounted his meetings with Jay Elliott, who was arrested in New York as the alleged key figure in the plot. Elliott, a traveling representative of the Freidrich Zoellner Corporation, a New York metals firm associated with a West Germany company, and Rolf Duenbier, a Zoellner vice-president, were arraigned in New York last year on charges of having conspired in the United States to injure or destroy property in a foreign country.
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