Security sources announced Tuesday the arrest of the terrorists who fatally shot British tourist Paul Appelby in the Old City of Jerusalem Sunday and who may be responsible for at least one other murder and two attempted murders of tourists there during the past two months.
The suspects were said to belong to the Abu Moussa faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which broke away from the mainstream PLO headed by Yasir Arafat and is reportedly backed by Syria. A Jerusalem magistrates court banned the release of further details.
AppeIby, 28, was killed by a .22 caliber bullet fired into the base of his skull as he was about to enter the Garden Tomb, the burial place of Jesus according to Protestant tradition. The same caliber bullet murdered an Israeli business-woman, Zehavia Ben-Ovadia, in her office near the Damascus Gate on April 13.
The suspects are also believed to have wounded an American Jewish tourist, David Blumenfeld, in the Old City last March 7, and a German woman tourist on April 16. Blumenfeld, a Conservative rabbi from Long Island, is executive director of the New York City Holocaust Memorial Commission. He was shot in the head. The German woman sustained a slight shoulder wound as she and her husband were entering a Christian shrine in the Old City.
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