The remains of an Israel Defense Force soldier captured in the Lebanon war nine years ago were returned to Israel and given a military funeral Friday at his home village of Beit Jann in Upper Galilee.
Samir Assad, a Druse, was kidnapped near Sidon in southern Lebanon in 1983 by members of Nayef Hawatmeh’s Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
His remains were flown to Tel Aviv by way of Vienna last Thursday under the auspices of the International Red Cross.
They were exchanged for Israel’s agreement to permit a living member of the same outlawed terrorist group to return to his West Bank village, from where he was deported to Jordan for terrorist activities five years ago.
Exactly how and when Assad died is a mystery. Pathologists who examined the remains and definitively identified the soldier ruled out claims by his captors that he was killed by an Israeli air force raid on the base where he was being held.
The skeleton showed no evidence of blast damage, the doctors reported.
Thousands of Israelis, Jews and Druse, mingled in Beit Jann waiting for Assad’s flag-draped coffin. The crowd was entirely of men. The women spent the long hours of mourning waiting and praying at Hiluwa, a nearby Druse holy site.
Ali Abu Hilal, the former deportee, arrived on the same plane that brought Assad’s body. At a hastily arranged news conference after a triumphal return to his home village, he freely admitted membership in the terrorist group and denied he had agreed to refrain from political activity as a condition of his return.
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.
