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Terrorist murderer Samir Kuntar (archive)
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| By Israel Insider staff July 7, 2007 |
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An Israeli official, appointed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, met with a notorious Lebanese terrorist jailed in Israel, and informed him that that there has been progress in German-mediated prisoner swap talks with Hezbollah, the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam reported Saturday.
Ofer Dekel, the special coordinator responsible for the return of missing or abducted IDF soldiers, made the remarks in a meeting with Samir Kuntar at Hadarim prison. Kuntar is currently serving four life sentences at the prison near Netanya for the 1979 murder of four Israelis, including Danny Haran and his daughter.
However, an official in the Prime Minister's office denied the report and told The Jerusalem Post that, about a month ago, when Dekel was in the Hadarim Prison, Kuntar tried to engage Dekel in a conversation. Dekel refused to respond and no conversation took place, the official said.
Kuntar is a Lebanese Druze who belonged to the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), a pro-Palestinian organization led by Abu Abbas. The goal of the operation was to attack Nahariya, 10 km (6 mi) away from the Lebanese border.
Around midnight they arrived at the coastal town of Nahariya. The four killed a policeman who came across them. The group then entered a high building, 61 Jabotinski Street, where they parted into two groups. One group broke into the apartment of the Haran family before police reinforcements had arrived. The terrorists took twenty-eight-year old Danny Haran hostage along with his four-year-old daughter, Einat. The mother, Smadar Haran, was able to hide in a crawl space above the bedroom with her two-year-old daughter Yael, and a neighbour.
According to Smadar, "I will never forget the joy and the hatred in [Kuntar's group's] voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed. So I kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. "This is just like what happened to my mother," I thought." Yael Haran was accidentally suffocated to death by her mother's attempts to quiet her whimpering.
After taking the hostages, Kuntar's group took Danny and Einat down to the beach, where a shootout with Israeli policemen and soldiers erupted. Samir Kuntar shot the father, Danny, at close range in front of his daughter in the back and drowned him in the sea to ensure he was dead. Next, he smashed the four year old girl's head, Einat, on beach rocks and crushed her skull with the butt of his rifle.
A policeman and two of Samir Kuntar's unit were also killed in the shootout on the beach; Kuntar and the fourth participant were captured. The latter, Ahmed AlAbrass, was freed by Israel in the Ahmed Jibril prisoner exchange deal of May 1985 (1,150 Arab political prisoners were exchanged for three Israeli prisoners-of-war held in Lebanon), but Kuntar was not included in the deal.
Several months later, the PLF seized the Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise ship, demanding that Israel release Kuntar, along with other Palestinian prisoners. The hijackers killed a wheelchair-bound American Jewish passenger, Leon Klinghoffer.
There was no official confirmation that Dekel, a former Shin Bet Deputy Chief meeting, also met with the suviving family of Danny Haran in addition to the man who murdered him and his daughter.
Hezbollah are reportedly requesting Kuntar's release in return for freeing two IDF soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, whose abduction by the guerilla organization last summer sparked the Second Lebanon War. There is no indication that Regev and Goldwasser are still alive.
There were delays, Dekel said, due to Hezbollah's demand that Israel also free Palestinian prisoners. The comment, and the intimate visit to Kuntar's cell, would seem to indicate that Olmert is prepared to release Kuntar.
That doesn't bother the parents of the missing IDF soldiers. Shlomo Goldwasser, Ehud's father, said in response to the reports that "any move that aids in the release of our sons is a blessed one, and we hope for the best." He told Haaretz that the family members of the two soldiers had received no official conformation of the progress in the prisoner swap talks. "I know who we are dealing with, and Nasrallah is still dictating the terms," Goldwasser added.
Goldwasser is scheduled to join a group of representatives of the abducted soldiers' families in Europe on Sunday, ahead of a series of meetings with European officials. The representatives are to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday to request France's help in obtaining information regarding the fate of Regev and Goldwasser and securing the freedom of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit.
A rally in support of the release of the abducted soldiers is to take place in Paris on Sunday.
Hamas is requesting that members of its military wing's leadership jailed at Hadarim be released as part of a deal for Shalit, who was kidnapped by Gaza militants in a June 2006 cross border raid. |
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