Palestinian tried in Brussels over killing PLO representative
Regional-International, Judicial, 3/16/1999

The trial of Hisham Rajeh, accused of killing former PLO representative in Brussels Naeem Khudr in 1981, started in Brussels on Monday.

AFP said that Rajeh, who is an Iraqi of a Palestinian origin had admitted that he belongs to a "split" Palestinian organization in Iraq, but he denied having carried out the assassination.

The trial is being conducted 18 years after the assassination because Hisham Rajeh spent the period between 1982-1995 serving a sentence in Austria where he had to spend life in prison after being convicted of killing a municipal advisor in Vienna in May 1991, just one month after the death of Naeem Khudr, and of carrying out an attack against a synagogue in the Austrian capital, resulted in the death of two persons in August 1981.

The assassination of the Austrian municipal council Henrich Pentel, who was the chairman of the Israeli - Palestinian Friendship Association occurred in the same conditions in which Naeem Khudr was assassinated, a matter which made the Belgian investigators suspect Hisham Rajeh.

Both Khudr and Pentel were considered as moderate concerning the Israeli - Palestinian conflict.

An analysis made in Belgium showed that the bullets by which the two men were killed were fired by the same weapon, but other analyses said the opposite.

Austria handed Hisham Rajeh to Belgium on March 22, 1995.

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