From The San Francisco Chronicle - 02/04/1985
June 1st, 2007 at 2:49 pmJewish Leader Abducted
Beirut
Police said yesterday that unidentified gunmen abducted the head of Lebanon’s Jewish community on Sunday, forced him into a car and drove off.
The man, Ishaq Sassoun, 65, worked for a Lebanese company. He was the fourth Jew to be abducted in West Beirut in the last three days.
Police believe the kidnapings may be linked to the fighting in southern Lebanon between the Israeli occupation forces and the Moslem Shiite underground.
About a hundred Jews live in West Beirut. Most Lebanese Jews emigrated after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, mostly to Israel. Others went to the United States and Canada.
Sassoun had just arrived from a visit to the United Arab Emirates and was on his way home from the airport when the kidnapers intercepted him, the police said.
The other Jews were kidnaped over the weekend in the Wadi Abu Jamil neighborhood. Police identified them as Elie Hallak, Elie Srour and Haim Cohen, an Iranian Jew.
About 7500 Jews lived in Wadi Abu Jamil neighborhood before the exodus. They used to be recognized as one of 17 religious communities in Lebanon and were assigned one seat in the 99-member parliament. Now the neighborhood is inhabited by Kurds.
In a related development, a Dutch Jesuit priest who disappeared 16 days ago was found dead at the bottom of a well in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, a Jesuit spokesman said yesterday.
The priest, the Rev. Nicholas Kluiters, 43, was one of 11 Westerners who have disappeared or been kidnaped in Lebanon this year, and one of six in the past month.
A police report said the body of a “badly decomposed” man was found near where Kluiters was believed to have been kidnaped on March 14. “Unfortunately, we are now certain it is him,” a Jesuit spokesman in Beirut said.
No one claimed responsibility for his disappearance.
Early today, a French Embassy official said kidnapers have released Gilles Peyrolles, a French diplomat who was abducted almost two weeks ago in the north Lebanese city of Tripoli.
“He has been freed and is in good health,” the official said. He would not say where Peyrolles is.
New York Times
(Copyright 1985)
Date: 02/04/1985
Publication: The San Francisco Chronicle
worriedlebanese Said,
June 18, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
It’s amazing how inaccurate the press is. There was never a seat attributed to the jewish community in Lebanese parliament, and all top ranking Lebanese Jews in the Lebanese administration and army were pressed to leave in the decade following the establishment of Israel.