SYRIA PREZ BRAINS BEHIND ISRAELI CAR BOMBS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100480004-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: September 17, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100480004-8
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SYRIA PREZ BRAINS BEHIND
NEW YORK POST
17 September 1985
ISRAELI CAR BOMBS
By MICHAEL J. BERLIN
YRIAN President
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the
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PRESIDENT ASSAD
Mug for marlynkom.
sources told The
v: have been
aimed at Israeli troops
and their Lebanese
&Mee in the Israel-
Lebanon border area.
The officials provided
=tafrom three of
srecent speeches,
in which be told groups
of teachers and students
that "the death of mar-
tyrs" in Lebanon was
vital to "defend the
homeland" and "repel
aligyrreiagiftilLhad denied any
links to earlier terror at-
tacks by Shiite Moslem
extremists nst
American. Israeli and
French targets in Leba-
non ? including the
bombings of the U.&
Embassy and the U.S.
Marine base in Beirut
But it has openly pub-
licised and praised the
latest string of suicide-
bombings.
Since the Israeli pull-
back to its border sone
with Lebanon last
spring, there have been
at least eight suicide
strikes by Lebanese ter-
rorists from Syrian.
sponsored groups.
They all were aimed
at the checkpoints run
by Israeli troops and
their allies in the South
Lebanon Army (SLA).
The "martyrs" ? both
men and women ? be-
to either Leba-
nollagd "Syrian National
Socialist Party" or the
Lebanese Beath Social-
ist Party, both of which
are financed by and
allied with Assad's
Booth Party in Syria.
Intelm officials
110%-71-1ll? established
that although the Leba-
nese parties recruit the
:et-
Ing of their missions is
determined in Damas-
cus, the officials said.
The training camps
are near Baalbek, in
Lebanon's Bekaa Valley,
which is controlled by
Syrian troops.
One of the bases, in the
Bekaa town of Shtoura,
was bombed by the Is-
raeli Air Force on Aug. 2.
. The training program
tis run he chibi ciffaz Syrian intet-
ligence for Lebanon. the
sources said.
War. provides driving
lessons for the suicide
bombers, the explosive
charges with which
their cars are packed,
ideological indoctrina-
tion and false IDs.
Assad's role has been
to encourage personally
the terror tactics, and to
Inspire the recruiting of
volunteers with his own
statements.
In a May 4 speech to
the Syrian Students'
Union ? reported by the
Syrian party Journal, Al
Beath ? Assad confided
that he had told a party
meeting:
"I hope that my life
would not come to an
end unless by martyr-
dom. and I pointed out
the preference and pri-
ority of this death over
any other one."
In the same speech he
revealed that, because "I
believed in the greatness
of martyrdom." he had
urged "the necessity that
the [Syrian] state set up
suicide squads of air
pilots; we used the well-
known Japanese word
'kamikaze.' "
A month later, after the
first of the suicide car
bomb attacks in the Is-
rael-Lebanon border
zone, Assad told a group
of religious teachers
("uleanas") at a banquet
marking the end of the
Ramadan holiday fast,
that "the Lebanese have
committed heroic deeds."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100480004-8