Effort to Kill Exiled Kadafi Foes Thwarted, Egypt Says

The interior minister said today that police thwarted an attempt to kill two exiled opponents of Libyan leader Col. Moammar Kadafi by crashing an ambulance into a car carrying the assassination squad.

One of the intended victims was Abdel-Hamid Bakoush, the last Libyan prime minister under the monarchy Kadafi overthrew in 1969.

Bakoush told the Associated Press that two of the four Libyan hit men were wounded in a gunfight with police last Wednesday when the plot was thwarted.

Interior Minister Ahmed Rushdy told reporters today that four Libyans were arrested. He also said the alleged plot included a fifth man, an informant whose nationality was not disclosed and whose information led to the arrests.

Rushdy said the assassination team was one of seven units totaling 28 men trained by Kadafi’s Libyan government to assassinate Bakoush. The other assassination squads have not infiltrated Egypt, he said.

$4.5-Million Bounty Reported

The minister said Libya had promised each of the five men, including the informer, a bounty worth $4.5 million for killing Bakoush. The team had brought 10,000 Libyan dinars, the equivalent of $30,000, into Egypt, he said.

The interior minister gave no information about the other target of the alleged conspiracy except his name, Mohammed Mokaryef. Bakoush said Mokaryef once held ministerial rank in the Kadafi regime as head of its accounting department.

Rushdy said Mokaryef and Bakoush were to have been assassinated at a luncheon for Libyan exiles on a farm near the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria. Bakoush said in a telephone interview that there were 10 exiles at the luncheon and that Mokaryef was not among them.

“We were having lunch in a house belonging to a Libyan . . . when we heard gunshots in the street,” Bakoush said. “When the shooting stopped, we went out and saw remains of a fight between Egyptian police and the Libyans.

“I saw four Libyans, three on the ground and one in a car. Two of the four were wounded.”

Rushdy did not mention the gunfight Bakoush described. He said that when the assassination team started moving in a car toward the farm, the police, who were in an ambulance, blocked their way and arrested them.

The alleged plot would be the second in just under a year against Bakoush that Egypt claims to have stopped. Early last November, two Britons and two Maltese were arrested in the first attempt. They have since been deported.