Prisoner at Top of List Involved in ’79 Killing of Israelis

The man at the top of the list of 50 prisoners whose freedom is being demanded by the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro was involved in one of the most tragic terrorist attacks ever staged here, Israeli officials said Tuesday.

They said that the prisoner, originally identified as Samir Konaitery, is really Samir Sami Kuntar, who was one of four terrorists who slipped past Israeli coastal defenses in a rubber dingy before dawn on April 22, 1979, and broke into the apartment of Danny and Semadar Haran in Nahariya, near the Lebanese border.

As the four took Danny Haran and his 5-year-old daughter, Einat, hostage, Haran’s wife, Semadar, hid in a utility room with their second daughter, 2-year-old Yael.

Afraid that the toddler would cry out and betray them, the terrified woman held a pillow over her daughter’s face, accidentally smothering her to death as the terrorists rampaged through the Haran apartment and tried to break into others on the floor.

Neighbor Shoots Intruder

A neighbor shot one of the intruders to death as he broke into his apartment. The other terrorists apparently panicked and fled back toward the beach with hostages Haran and his daughter in tow.

As they left, they encountered a policeman and civil guardsman, then a group of Israeli soldiers. In the resulting clashes, Haran, his daughter, a second terrorist and the policeman were killed and the civil guardsman wounded.

A pathologist’s report showed that Haran was killed by bullets from the terrorists’ guns and that his daughter died from a blow to the head delivered by Kuntar.

Kuntar, then 19, and the other surviving terrorist, Ahmed Assad Abaras, were sentenced to life imprisonment on Jan. 28, 1980. Both men were identified at their trial as members of the Palestine Liberation Front, a radical PLO faction then supported by Iraq and Libya.

Traded for Israelis

Abaras was freed last May 20 as part of an exchange of 1,150 mostly Palestinian prisoners for three Israeli soldiers captured two years earlier in Lebanon by a pro-Syrian group.

Kuntar is one of “several hundred, but less than 1,000” Palestinians still imprisoned in Israel, according to military sources.

Semadar Haran, the only member of her family who survived the attack, has since remarried and taken the name Haran-Kaiser. On Tuesday, she said she bitterly opposes the release of Kuntar.

“He is the one who shot my husband and then broke my daughter’s head with a rock,” she told the Associated Press. “He hit her several times with a rock, and I heard he was laughing.

“The attack was so brutal that it became something of a symbol in Israel, and also, I think, for the Palestinians,” she added. “Kuntar may be the symbol for them. . . . This is why we need the death penalty for convicted terrorists.”