Lebanon Orders Trial for Four in U.S. Embassy Blast

BEIRUT —  An investigating magistrate said Thursday that he has referred four suspects in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy to a military court for trial and recommended that they be executed if convicted.

He said two of the men also are charged with bombing the Iraqi Embassy in 1981. Sixty-three people were killed at the American Embassy and 48 at the Iraqi Embassy.

The military investigator identified the four as Hussein Saleh Harb, 40, and Mahmoud Moussa Dairaki, 42, both Lebanese; Mohammed Nayef Jadaa, 54, a Palestinian, and Sami Mahmoud Hujji, 47, an Egyptian.

The investigator, who spoke anonymously in accordance with military regulations, also recommended death sentences for Harb and Hujji as suspects in the Iraqi Embassy bombing.

Sources close to the investigation said at the time that five or six suspects were arrested soon after April 18, 1983, the day a pickup truck loaded with explosives blew up at the entrance to the the U.S. Embassy in the seaside district of Muslim West Beirut. The 63 dead included 17 Americans; 112 people were wounded.

Iraq’s embassy was hit by a car bomb Jan. 15, 1981. In addition to 48 people killed, 90 were wounded.

The investigator also asked in his statement that three other alleged accomplices be imprisoned but did not say if any of them had been arrested.

Judicial sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the investigation has taken so long because 10 years of civil war have all but destroyed the Lebanese justice system.

Earlier Thursday, Defense Minister Adel Osseiran said Lebanese troops and police soon will implement new measures to protect Westerners from being abducted in the area of the American University of Beirut and its adjacent hospital in West Beirut.

Fourteen foreigners, including four university and hospital staff members, have been kidnaped since March, 1984.

Nine of the original 40 American faculty or staff members remain. They all live on campus, according to university spokesman Radwan Mawlawi.