A terrorist car bomb plot intended to cause maximum civilian casualties in Jerusalem was thwarted by security forces last month, it was disclosed in a Ramallah military court Monday.
The chief suspect, Wail Mohammad Musa Salame, a 31-year-old Jordanian citizen, was arraigned for the crime.
According to the charge sheet, Salame was recruited two years ago by Al Fatah, the main faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and trained in the use of arms and explosives at bases in Jordan and Algeria.
In April, he was ordered to remove explosives from a secret cache in the Ramot forest and boody-trap a stolen white Ford to which police license plates were affixed.
The accused was to have left the car in a parking lot next to the government ministries in Givat Ram on July 7.
According to the charges, Salame was to set the explosives to detonate at 2 p.m local time when crowds of workers would be leaving their offices for the afternoon break.
The plot was foiled by the suspect’s arrest a week earlier when he crossed the Allenby Bridge from Jordan into Israel.
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