Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 28, 1990 TAG: 9003280606
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RASHAYA FOUKHAR, LENGTH: Medium
Villagers had accused William Robinson of trying to establish an Israeli settlement in Rashaya Foukhar in southern Lebanon.
However, acquaintances said he only wanted to expand his 7-year-old orphanage, located in Israel's self-declared security zone.
Israel denied that any such settlement was planned.
U.S. officials said Robinson had been warned repeatedly of danger.
Three masked assailants broke into Robinson's house Tuesday night while he was singing bedtime prayers with his wife, four sons and 26 other children from his orphanage, Lebanese security sources told U.N. investigators.
The assailants then tied up Robinson's wife and sent the children into another room before shooting Robinson three times in the neck and chest, the sources said. The masked men also took $4,000 and some jewelry before fleeing. In Beirut, the Communist Party and the pro-Syrian Lebanese National Resistance Front claimed responsibility for the killing.
"One of our units Tuesday night carried out the death sentence against William Robinson, who was seeking to establish an Israeli settlement on Lebanese territory," a statement from the front said. The front has carried out several guerrilla raids on Israeli targets in the area.
The Communist Party said in its statement that the slaying "brought an end to schemes to plant Jewish settlers in south Lebanon." The party and its militia have carried out numerous raids on Israeli targets, including an abortive suicide truck bombing in southern Lebanon on April 21, 1985.
U.S. Embassy officials in Tel Aviv, Israel, said Robinson had been advised repeatedly of U.S. government policy barring Americans from visiting Lebanon.
Rashaya Foukhar is inside Israel's self-proclaimed security zone in south Lebanon, about eight miles northeast of Israel's border. The six- to 10-mile-deep zone was set up to serve as a buffer against raids by guerrillas and is policed by the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army.
William Wolford, administrator of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, said Robinson was a former U.S. Marine from just outside Chicago who "had a love for the children of Lebanon and went there to help."
He said Robinson was a missionary who "stayed in Lebanon because there was no other place to take care of these 20 children. He was trying to get permission to adopt so he could bring them out. He was trying to expand the facilities there."
Earlier this month, 5,000 residents of Rashaya Foukhar petitioned the government of President Elias Hrawi to prevent Robinson from establishing what they called the first Israeli settlement on Lebanese soil.
The petition said Robinson, whom it described as a Jewish American, moved to settle in the town's school right after Israel's 1982 invasion and gradually brought in relatives and Israeli acquaintances.
Beirut newspapers have said Robinson used trained dogs to keep villagers off his fenced compound, arousing their suspicion about his activities.
But sources in Lebanon, who asked not to be identified further, said Robinson was engaged in a dispute with Shiite Moslems over land that he wanted to expand his orphanage.
Robinson first entered Lebanon from Israel in 1978 and worked as a technician at a Christian television station in the southern Lebanese town of Marjayoun. In 1983, he founded his Christian Children's Home project in Rashaya Foukhar and was caring for 29 handicapped children when he was shot, security sources said.
His wife said in a previous interview with a Beirut newspaper that three orthopedic technicians - a Swede, a Briton and a Spaniard - served with Robinson on a voluntary basis.
"We are not an organization and we do not belong to any organization or even a church," she was quoted as saying by the Ad-Diyar daily. "We are a family moved by humanitarian motives."
The project includes a young adults' home, a children's home, a swimming pool, a vocational training school, a medical center, a physical therapy center, a school, a retirement home and an animal shelter, as well as administration offices and stables.
by CNB