Peruvian authorities intend to try three members of the Abu Nidal organization whose alleged plot to attack Israeli and Jewish interests there was uncovered.
The men, who were arrested July 30 in the capital of Lima, were found to have compiled extensive information on Israeli and Jewish offices and synagogues, as well as detailed reports on the schedules of American and British embassy personnel.
They reportedly had also followed employees of the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Lima and had maps of the offices.
“The most complete information was on the Israelis first,” said a spokesman for the Peruvian Embassy in Washington. “They seemed to concentrate on the Jewish community.”
The group’s leader, Hocine Bouzidi, 36, who was carrying Algerian papers, is the subject of an Interpol report. He is believed to have planned the 1985 hijacking of an Egyptair jetliner to Malta and the simultaneous terrorist attacks on El Al Israeli Airlines counters at the Rome and Vienna airports in December of that year.
Peru will not, however, try Bouzidi for these crimes, but for conspiring to attack the targets in Peru.
The other two men have been identified by Peru as Mohamed Abed Abdelrahman Ibrahim, 19, of Egypt and Ahmad Assaad Mohamad, also 19, of Lebanon.
The embassy spokesman said the documents were found in a house in Lima after police followed Bouzidi, whose extensive spending sprees over a period of several weeks aroused suspicion that he was a drug dealer. The terrorist plot came as a complete surprise to Peruvian authorities.
‘INTELLIGENCE REPORTS’ ON ISRAELIS
Police uncovered “all kinds of documents with intelligence reports on Israeli Embassy officials and maps of the embassy,” the Peruvian spokesman said. “They also had a very complete map of the synagogue, and also the British embassy, British officials and Venezuela (embassy). But the most complete information was on the Israelis first . . . . and on the Jewish community.”
The spokesman said this was the first time Peru had uncovered Arab terrorists on its soil, though for a long time Peru has had problems with an indigenous guerrilla movement, Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path).
The terrorists, if convicted, are likely to be sentenced to prison terms of indeterminate length.
The embassy spokesman said security precautions are now being taken around the targeted areas.
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.
