OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (Agencies)
Israeli investigators have arrested six men suspected of trying to set up a terror network linked to al-Qaeda, the Shin Bet security service said in a statement Friday, including a college student who expressed interest in shooting down President George W. Bush's helicopter earlier this year.
"The six suspects were arrested over the course of the months of June and July and were charged on Friday," a Shin Beth spokesman said.
The two Israeli citizens were named as Ibrahim Nashaf, from Taybeh, and Mohammed Nejam, from Nazareth. Both are students at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Nejam is suspected of having studied and photographed the helicopter landing area on the university campus with the view to an eventual attack on it, the spokesman said. U.S. President George W. Bush landed there during his visit in January.
No details were given on what Nashaf had allegedly done.
Those arrests marked the first time Israel had accused any of its citizens of cooperating with the global terror network.
The charge sheet said the suspects met at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and had collected information from the Internet on how to make bombs.
The four Palestinians were said to have wanted to become part of the network that was being formed.
Two other Arab Israelis, both Bedouins, were charged on July 9 on suspicion of being al-Qaeda agents.
The men were arrested in June and July, the statement said. But the information was only approved for publication on Friday, the day the men were to be indicted in a Jerusalem court. |
