Columbia Missourian · 10 October 1981

CP-1981-042

Hidden bomb kills PLO official

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Transcribed from the clipping

ROME, Italy (UPI) — The information chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization was killed Friday by a bomb exploded under his bed in one of Rome's most luxurious hotels. Police said it was a highly professional assassination. Majed Abu Sharar, chief of the PLO's public relations department, died when the bomb went off shortly before 1 a.m. (7 p.m.

CDT Thursday) in his room on the fourth floor of the Flora hotel on Rome's tourist-famed Via Veneto. A PLO spokesman blamed Israel for the attack, calling Abu Sharar a victim of the “homicidal madness of Israeli terrorists.”

However, a hard-line Palestinian group in Beirut claimed responsibility for the assassination, saying it killed Abu Sharar because he had “diverged” from the radical line and had become too moderate. The bomb, placed beneath his bed, started a fire that burned Abu Sharar's corpse beyond recognition. Scores of tourists and other hotel guests fled their rooms in night clothes.

Firemen quickly extinguished the blaze. Police first theorized Abu Sharar may have been preparing the bomb for a terrorist attack and it had exploded prematurely. However, fire brigade experts said later they found evidence the bomb was rigged under Abu Sharar's bed. Abu Sharar was registered at the hotel as Abbas Zithouni, 47, an Algerian living in Beirut.

A spokesman for the PLO's Rome office conceded Zithouni was really Abu Sharar, the PLO's top information official and a member of the central committee of Al Fatah, the guerrilla group headed by Yasser Arafat. The spokesman said Sharar, in Rome for a conference of Arab journalists, carried the Algerian passport as a security precaution.

Al Assifa, a pro-Syrian guerrilla group, telephoned new agencies in Beirut and Rome to claim responsibility for the killing. “We have killed the traitor Majed Abu Sharar in Rome. He and his friends had diverged from the proper path of the Palestinian revolution and armed struggle. They represented the line of surrender,” the caller said.

Abu Sharar was born in what is now Israel. He was a father of three and was known as a moderate intellectual.

How this transcription was made

Single scan, three columns. Transcribed from 7x crops. — No masthead, no date line, no folio on the clipping — the scan starts at the headline. Internal evidence: killed “Friday” at 1 a.m. Rome time, “7 p.m. CDT Thursday” (CDT places the paper in the Central zone, consistent with Missouri), so a Saturday paper — Oct. 10, 1981. Consistent with Maria's label; not confirmed from the page. The paper itself is taken on Maria's label alone. — “telephoned new agencies” (for “news agencies”). Verified at 7x and kept as set.

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