French police are convinced that the Iraqi law professor shot to death here early Friday was murdered for political reasons. Police sources said that 40-year-old Basil Raoud el-Kubaisi was killed by either dissident Palestinian elements or “Israeli agents.”
According to a statement released Friday in Beirut by the Palestine Liberation Organization, el-Kubaisi was one of the leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The statement, said that he was shot “while carrying out a mission in Paris.” It accused “imperialist intelligence and Zionism” of having murdered him. The statement also charged French police with “complicity” in the killing. It alleged local police “are doing nothing to prevent Israeli agents from operating in France.”
El Kubaisi was gunned down shortly after midnight Friday by two men who had followed him for some time and opened fire at point blank range with pistols equipped with silencers. The Iraqi, a professor of international law at the American University in Beirut, died on the spot from eight bullets in the head and one in the heart. Police have only a scant description of the two assailants believed to be in their late twenties or early thirties.
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