The Hindu : International : Militants seized from West Bank jail will be put on trial: Israel

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Wednesday, Mar 15, 2006

International

International

Militants seized from West Bank jail will be put on trial: Israel

They are going to get the punishment for the crimes they committed

JERUSALEM: The six militants who surrendered to Israeli troops after a day long siege at a prison in the West Bank town of Jericho will be put on trial for killing an Israeli Cabinet Minister and other crimes, a senior Israel official said on Tuesday.

Mr. Raanan Gissin said the militants would ``face Israeli justice, which is fair and they're going to get the punishment for that crime that they committed.''

A report from Gaza City said some 15,000 Palestinians led by dozens of gunmen firing in the air marched there to protest the raid of the prison.

Chanting anti-Israeli and anti-American slogans, they marched toward the Palestinian parliament building.

U.S. appeals for calm

In Jakarta, United States State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who is travelling with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said Washington was in touch with both sides to appeal for calm.

``We want to see this resolved as quickly and peacefully as possible,'' he said, adding that the British monitors were withdrawn out of concern for their safety.

There were no U.S. monitors in the prison at the time, Mr. McCormack said, although it was a joint British-U.S. mission.

He said the Palestinians had been told repeatedly of concerns over the safety of U.S. and British monitors at the Jericho prison, which housed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leader Ahmed Saadat and five other prominent figures.

The British sent a letter to the Palestinian Authority on March 8 issuing a ``last warning'' about safety concerns, he added.

Mr. McCormack said Ms. Rice had spoken to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw from Indonesia, where she also discussed the West Asia peace process with officials from the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Israel's biggest raid for months followed suggestions that Saadat might be freed. A guard and a prisoner were killed in clashes and protests erupted across the Palestinian territories with most anger directed at Britain and the U.S. — Agencies

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