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| By Associated Press October 9, 2005 |
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Three Israeli Arabs pleaded guilty in a Tel Aviv court Sunday to planning to plant bombs on a main commuter train track and discussing bombing Tel Aviv's Azrieli Towers, the tallest buildings in Israel.
The court transcript said Mujahed Dukan, 19, Amin Ziyuti, 20 and Dubian Nusseirat, 27, admitted plotting during the summer and fall of 2004, along with a group of Palestinians from the militant Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, to lay explosives on a railroad track at Netanya, north of Tel Aviv.
The three men, from the Israel Arab town of Taibeh, were arrested by Israeli security forces on Oct. 9, the day before they were due to take delivery of three bombs from militants in the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank city of Nablus.
Dukan was born in Balata, but he and his family moved to Taibeh in 2000 after receiving Israeli citizenship for reasons that are not explained in the court transcript.
The published section of the court proceedings does not say how the men were caught, but the document referred to several witnesses by one-word pseudonyms, a style which often refers to intelligence agents.
The transcript says that while they were reconnoitering the railway line, Ziyuti suggested to Dukan that it would be possible to also plant a bomb in the Azrieli complex, located in one of Tel Aviv's busiest districts and next to a complex of government buildings, including the Defense Ministry. There is no indication in the document that the idea was ever taken any further.
Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel's citizens. Though many have been radicalized by five years of violence between Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, including their relatives, few Israeli Arabs have taken an active part in the conflict.
Prosecutors are seeking a 15 year jail term for Dukan -- who initiated contacts with the Nablus group -- and eight years for Nusseirat. Zyuti's punishment is still under discussion, the court record said. Sentencing is set for Oct. 21.
In 2002 Israeli security officials said agents and troops had foiled a Palestinian attempt to detonate a one-ton truck bomb in the underground parking lot of the 50-story Azrieli towers, as in the 1993 attack by Muslim militants on the World Trade Center in New York.
A Palestinian allegedly involved in the plot was arrested in an army raid on the West Bank town of Qalqiliya, but no explosives were found during that search.
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