The Israeli Consulate in Johannesburg continued to employ David Protter, 24, as a security guard even after it learned that he had been discharged from the Israeli army for psychiatric reasons, a fact he concealed when first employed. That disclosure was made last night by Gen. (Res,) Rehavam Zeevi, special advisor to Premier Yitzhak Rabin, who was sent to Johannesburg last week to investigate the circumstances of Protter’s seizure of the Consulate offices April 28 which resulted in the death of four people and the wounding of 32.
Zeevi said Protter’s personnel file contained high recommendations from his superiors including the former security officer and his successor, Giora Raviv, who Protter felled with a karate chop and then riddled with machinegun bullets. The Consulate apparently felt that Protter was suitable for his job which involved screening and searching visitors to the offices, despite his questionable background.
Zeevi also disclosed that Protter had an unwitting accomplice in his younger brother, Charles, who helped him take the Consulate employes hostage as they reported for work on the morning of April 28 in the belief that he was assisting in a counter-espionage operation at the Consulate.
PROTTER TERMED SCHIZOPHRENIC
Zeevi described Charles Protter as a naive young man who believed everything he was told by his older brother, including the story that he had been made a military attache at the Consulate and was engaged in rooting out spies, Zeevi’s evaluation of David Protter, who he interviewed in jail during his 48-hour investigation in Johannesburg, was that he is a schizophrenic personality with delusions of grandeur who wanted revenge against the Consulate for not being given a position of greater authority.
He described Protter as a self-trained soldier, karate expert and sharpshooter with an obsession for security and of the belief that Israeli security measures were faulty and too lax. He seized the Consulate employes and members of their families partly for revenge and partly to expose the alleged laxity of security arrangements at the Consulate, Zeevi reported.
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.
