3 Arabs Held in Peru Tied to Terrorism

LIMA, Peru —  A Palestinian allegedly connected with the 1985 terrorist attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports and two associates have been arrested while trying to form links with Peruvian guerrillas, police said Saturday.

The three suspects were presented Saturday to reporters, and police said they are members of the Abu Nidal Palestinian terrorist organization.

Police identified them as Hocine Bouzidi, 36, a Palestinian who they said had Algerian identity papers; Ahmad Assad Mohammed, 19, a Lebanese, and Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abed, 19, an Egyptian.

Police Col. Javier Palacios said Interpol, the international police agency, has said Bouzidi helped plan the simultaneous raids in December, 1985, at the Rome and Vienna airports in which 20 people were killed and 121 wounded. Interpol also said Bouzidi was involved in planning the November, 1985, hijacking of an Egyptian jetliner to Malta, he said. Egyptian commandos stormed the craft after it landed and 60 people died.

Palacios said Interpol reports named Bouzidi as a Central Committee member of the Abu Nidal organization, a radical group that split off from the Palestine Liberation Organization and has been blamed for scores of terrorist attacks in the Middle East and Europe.

The PLO issued a statment in Lima on Saturday calling the three suspects “enemies of the Palestinian revolution.”

Palacios said that the three were arrested July 16 in Lima. He said police recovered documents showing that Bouzidi had been in Peru 45 days and the two others for seven months.

A police statement said that the three were pretending to be students of Spanish at the Peruvian-North American Cultural Institute.

The three had lists of cars and license plate numbers of vehicles from the embassies of Israel, Britain, Belgium and Colombia, and lists of Israeli businessmen in Colombia, the statement added.

Floor plans to the Israeli Embassy and an Israeli synagogue in Lima were found in a house that the men were using as a meeting place, the statement said.

Palacios said police suspected, but had “no conclusive proof,” that the three sought connections with Peru’s Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) movement to gain recruits for Abu Nidal and plan joint attacks against U.S., Jewish and Peruvian targets here.