Moshe Shapira Improves, Allowed Visitors for First Time

The condition of Moshe Shapira, the most seriously injured among the five Cabinet ministers wounded in Tuesday’s Knesset bombing, showed a marked improvement today. He exchanged notes with a neighboring patient in Hadassah Hospital. Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, who also was reported recovering steadily from splinter wounds in the hand and who was expected to leave the hospital Saturday.

The Minister of Religious Affairs was permitted visitors today for the first time. One of them was Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim. Mr. Shapira told the Chief Rabbi he had been deeply moved by reports of the prayers recited in his behalf in synagogues in Israel and in the United States.

Mrs. Golda Meir, Israel’s Foreign Minister, limping slightly but smiling, was released from the hospital this morning after treatment for leg wounds. She told reporters she expected to attend tonight’s gala dinner at the King David Hotel here for the 100-man United Jewish Appeal study mission.

Moshe Carmel, the Minister of Transport, who suffered a broken arm when the hand grenade exploded near the Minister’s table in the Knesset during a foreign policy debate, may be able to leave the hospital in a week or so, hospital authorities said.

Moshe Douek, the 25-year-old grenade thrower, was arraigned in magistrate’s court this morning and entered a plea of guilty to charges of attempted murder. Magistrate Yaacov Bazak ignored a plea from Douek, an immigrant from Iraq who has a record of treatment for mental illness, that “there is no need to keep me behind closed doors in order to carry on a trial,” and granted a police request for a 15-day detention.

An official police communique tonight stated that no evidence had been found that Douek had any accomplices or that his wholesale assassination attempt had any motive except personal ones due to his mental condition. Inquiry established that the hand grenade he used and two others found at his home had been stolen from the army.