
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 29, 1993                   TAG: 9303290072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Short

ARAB DISCREDITS LETTER IN BOMBING

A letter purportedly written by an anti-Israel group claiming credit for the World Trade Center bombing may provide a motive for the blast. But it also raised new questions Sunday.

Although the letter signed by the Liberation Army Fifth Battalion has been linked to one of the five Muslim fundamentalists arrested in connection with the bombing, an Arab-American community leader said Sunday he doesn't believe it could have been written by one of them.

"It was not written by a Muslim fundamentalist or religiously oriented person," said M.T. Mehdi, president of the American-Arab Relations Committee. Mehdi said the letter doesn't make the appropriate references to God that are required of Islamic writing.

"It was written by a secularist who was politically oriented," he said. "If the letter is authentic, it should clear those five suspects of all charges."

The letter, mailed to The New York Times four days after the Feb. 26 blast that killed six and injured more than 1,000, connected the bombing to anger over the United States' support of Israel.

One of the men arrested in connection with the bombing wrote it, the Times reported Sunday, quoting authorities it didn't identify.

by CNB