America Seen as Target in N.Y. Skyscraper Shootings

The Palestinian gunman who opened fire on sightseers at the Empire State Building picked the landmark to express his anger against the United States, Britain and France and to strike out against his personal enemies, according to a letter made public by police on Tuesday.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said that it would take mental health professionals to sort out the contents of a bitter letter titled “charter of honor” that Ali Hassan Abu Kamal carried to his death. The 69-year-old English professor from Gaza City on Sunday shot seven tourists--killing one of them--before turning his pistol on himself.

“It [the letter] indicates a man who had many enemies in his mind,” the mayor said. “I think it is going to take psychiatrists, psychologists and others to interpret what it all means.”

On Tuesday, the observation deck on the 86th floor of the Art Deco structure reopened to sightseers but with increased security, including metal detectors.

Police Commissioner Howard Safir said investigators so far had found no evidence linking the gunman to any radical group.

“Our belief is that he acted alone,” Safir said at the City Hall news conference.

Safir also cast doubt on the belief of Abu Kamal’s family that the professor, who arrived in New York Dec. 25, pulled the trigger because he was bilked out of his life savings, hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the United States.

“We have seen no evidence that this money in fact existed at this point,” the police commissioner said. “There are no bank accounts we are aware of. There was no currency found in his personal effects, no indication of safe deposit boxes.”

Safir said that Abu Kamal paid with cash, “and in no way would I characterize it as high rolling.”

“At this point in time, this alleged scam, there is no information that it in fact exists,” Safir added.

Police released the contents of the letter that attacked the United States and its two allies for being “enemy to the Palestinians” and making them homeless.

“The Zionists are the paw that carried out their savage aggression,” Abu Kamal claimed. “My restless aspiration is to murder as many of them as possible, and I have decided to strike at their own den in New York, and at the very Empire State Building in particular.”

In the letter, the gunman charged that Zionists had “usurped” his father’s land, which was “now worth 10 million U.S. dollars at least.”

He said he also wanted to “kill in revenge” a “gang of rogues” he claimed attacked him in his office in June 1993 because he would not help them cheat in their final examination.

Abu Kamal also expressed animosity against an Egyptian police official and the police officer’s brother, who he claimed insulted and beat him savagely in the early 1980s “for some passport formalities.”

The handwritten letter in English also marked for death three students in Ukraine who Abu Kamal said had “beaten and blackmailed” and had taken $250 from his son.

“It is to be made clear that any act of provocation or offense against me, or any attempt to impede my course of action shall be vigorously combatted whatever the consequences may be,” the gunman wrote.