Two El Fatah terrorists and their Israeli Arab collaborator received stiff sentences from a military court today for plotting sabotage against the Haifa oil refineries and Haifa port. The two El Fatah men, one of them trained as a diver in Red China and the other as a seaman in India, each received 20 years’ imprisonment for smuggling arms and explosives into Israel by sea. A 25 year sentence was imposed on their companion, a former resident of Acre, who served as their guide. He was charged with arms smuggling and plotting to shell Haifa port with Katyusha rockets mounted on a boat. The other two were planning to detonate explosives at the oil refineries north of Haifa. All three were captured last month when their craft, bound from Latakia, Syria with arms and explosives, was intercepted by an Israeli Navy patrol boat in Israel territorial waters off Ras el Nakira. The court refused their request for prisoner-of-war status. An Israeli-owned citrus packing house in Gaza was damaged last night when an explosive charge detonated near a packing machine but it continued to operate today. The plant was damaged by saboteurs on two previous occasions.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
