Few Clues Uncovered in Fatal Bombing : Arab Group Offers $100,000 Reward in Death of Its Director

As leaders of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee prepared to bury their executive director and offered a $100,000 reward for information in the bombing that killed him, police said Monday that scouring the wreckage of the group’s Santa Ana offices has turned up few immediate clues.

Officials of the committee told a press conference in Los Angeles that they are raising funds to offer the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the bombers.

David Habib, president of the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the committee, and James Kaddo, a board member, declined to discuss what, if any information, they have received on the bombing from law enforcement officials.

Kaddo said the group has received no communications from anyone claiming responsibility for the explosion.

Burial Today in Orange

The committee’s regional director, Alex M. Odeh, will be buried today at 11:30 a.m. at Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Orange, Habib said.

Meanwhile, police had little new information to offer. “The focus of our investigation is the physical evidence which has been collected at the scene,” Santa Ana Police Department spokeswoman Maureen Thomas said. Asked whether there is any significant evidence that would point investigators toward a suspect, Thomas said, “There’s nothing really solid, no.”

Particles from an “explosive device” taken by investigators who spent Friday and Saturday in the demolished committee offices on the second floor of a three-story building at 1905 East 17th St. were sent to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s crime lab, Thomas said.

The particles later will be examined by the FBI in Washington, she said. Fingerprints also are being examined, she said, but none as yet point to possible suspicious persons at the offices.

Thomas said investigators have not yet identified the type of bomb, which exploded at 9:11 a.m. Friday, killing Odeh and causing minor injuries to seven other people.

Investigators from three of the agencies probing the bombing--the FBI, Los Angeles Police Department Anti-Terrorist Division, and the Santa Ana Police Department--have said they believe that the device went off as Odeh entered the committee office, indicating that it was either timed or rigged to explode when Odeh opened the door.

Earl L. Gross, part-owner of the building, said marks indicate that the bomb was placed just inside the door. He said when he arrived at the office “about three minutes” after the blast, Odeh, 41, was lying in the hallway.

Gross said there is no structural damage to the building but that damage to the contents and the interior is “$100,000, tops.”

Intensity Magnified

One investigator said the building’s concrete floors and walls magnified the intensity of the explosion.

So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the bombing. Odeh’s family and associates believe that the blast may have been linked to remarks Odeh made on television newscasts the night before in which he expressed sympathy with the Palestine Liberation Organization and called its leader, Yasser Arafat “a man of peace.”

However, Habib, at the Monday press conference, said in a prepared statement that there is no direct link between Odeh’s TV appearances and his death.

“These (explanations) are smoke screens,” he said. “The murder . . . is just the most recent and heinous in a series of acts of terror and intimidation against Americans of ethnic origin,” he said. The acts, he said, “have as their purpose a concerted attempt to silence our community on issues of major significance.”