Egyptian Put in Prison for Slaying Israelis Hangs Self

An Egyptian policeman sentenced to 25 years in prison for murdering seven Israelis in the Sinai Desert hanged himself in his room at a prison hospital today, authorities said.

A formal statement issued by the military prison said prison guards found police Sgt. Suleiman Khater, 24, hanging by a strip of bedding from the iron bars of a window in his hospital room at around 10 a.m.

“A hospital doctor immediately untangled his neck, administered artificial respiration and a massage of the heart muscles, but he was dead already,” the statement said.

Khater was sentenced by a military court on Dec. 28 to 25 years at hard labor for shooting and killing seven Israeli tourists last Oct. 5 at Ras Burka in the Sinai peninsula along the Egyptian-Israeli border.

The trial became the center of a national controversy, with Islamic groups and leftist parties demanding Khater’s release, claiming he acted to defend Egypt’s frontier.

During the trial, Khater told the court he repeatedly warned the Israelis that the area he guarded was off limits and asked them to turn back, opening fire only when they refused to heed his warning.

But the three-man court rejected his defense, stating that he had “acted to kill.” It determined he fired 49 bullets at 12 Israeli vacationers, killing seven of them and injuring two others.

The court also rejected a plea of temporary insanity.

The killings took place during a period of especially high tension following an Israeli air raid on Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunisia which killed at least 73 people, including a dozen Tunisians.