Widow of Attache Says His Terrorist Death Still Hurts

The wife of a slain U.S. military attache wept today as she told a special terrorism court that her family still suffers because of her husband’s 1982 assassination.

“No one on Earth deserves to die like that, to be executed like that,” 47-year-old Sharon Ray told the seven-judge panel. “This assassination changed not one bit of U.S. policy. It only changed the lives of our family, and we still suffer.”

She made an emotional statement on the second day of the trial of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a Lebanese charged with complicity in the 1982 murders of Lt. Col. Charles Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov.

Abdallah, 35, left the trial Monday after denouncing what he called “Yankee executioners” in an opening statement. (Story, Page 8.) He did not attend the trial today.

‘No Reason That I Appear’

In a written statement, signed “Arab fighter,” he told the court that there was “no reason that I appear.” Jacques Verges, the defense attorney, said Abdallah did not intend to return to the trial.

Ray sobbed quietly and left the courtroom earlier today when the pistol prosecutors say was used to kill her husband was shown to the judges. Police found the pistol among other arms when they raided a Paris apartment rented by Abdallah.

As a party to the Abdallah case, Ray is not required to be a witness, but after composing herself she said she wanted to make a statement.

Amid tears, her voice trembling and cracking, Ray told the court that her husband taught their children--a son 20 and a daughter 22--to love and respect life.

Both children were at home the day their father was killed by a single gunshot to the head outside the family home in western Paris on Jan. 18, 1982.

“When I told them, my son fell over and my daughter just looked at me,” Ray said. “They did not understand what I was saying. Even I couldn’t understand that.”

She concluded by saying her husband “was 43 years old when he died. He could have lived another 30 years. I don’t accept assassination, thank you.”