Anger re use of vulnerable teen of as suicide bomber

Posted on Thu, Mar. 25, 2004
Anger expressed over use of vulnerable teen of as suicide bomber
By Michael Matza
Knight Ridder Newspapers

JERUSALEM - The uncle of a Palestinian boy caught trying to cross an Israeli army checkpoint in a vest stuffed with explosives was hopping mad.

If he finds out who sent his nephew on the aborted mission as a suicide bomber, said Khalil Abdo, he'd gladly kill the dispatcher himself.

"I would serve a life sentence for it," Abdo told Israeli Army radio. "One must never do a thing like that."

Abdo's anger was only part of the uproar across Israel and the Palestinian territories on Thursday at what many viewed as the exploitation of a troubled and vulnerable child.

Exactly who was to blame remained unclear. Some suspected a setup by Israeli collaborators, but Israel maintained the incident was genuine and symptomatic of a growing problem as militants turn increasingly to children to launch terror attacks.

Hussam Abdo, 16, a 10th-grader at Omar Ben al Hatab school in the volatile West Bank city of Nablus, was caught Wednesday at the heavily guarded Hawara checkpoint south of the city. Soldiers noticed a suspicious bulge beneath his sweatshirt and ordered him to freeze.

News photographs and videotape of the panicked teen held at gunpoint and cutting off the vest with scissors delivered by a remote-controlled robot played around the world.

The event diverted attention, at least temporarily, from Israel's widely condemned assassination Monday of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the quadriplegic spiritual leader of the group responsible for killing hundreds of Israelis in scores of suicide attacks.

Israeli spokesmen went into overdrive after Abdo's capture, decrying the ruthlessness of an enemy that took advantage of a boy who was easily swayed to prove himself by detonating a bomb among the soldiers at the checkpoint. The government press office followed up with a massive file of background information.

Among recent examples: a 17-year-old boy who killed only himself in January when his bomb belt exploded prematurely and two 17-year-olds who blew themselves up at the Israeli port of Ashdod, killing 10 Israelis on March 14.

Two days later, troops stopped an 11-year-old boy as he allegedly tried to smuggle explosives through the same checkpoint where Abdo was caught. The boy, who worked for tips carrying bags as a porter, said he thought he was carrying a heavy bag of car parts.

Early Thursday, Israeli troops entered Nablus and arrested six people. The Web site of the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported that three of the six were students at Abdo's school. An army spokesman declined to elaborate.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militia affiliated with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah party, at first claimed responsibility for Abdo's thwarted attack, but withdrew the claim Thursday and said Israel had set up the attack to discredit the faction.

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, Abdo said that, after years of bullying by classmates who teased him because he's small for his age, he wanted to reach the paradise he had learned about in Islamic teachings in school.

"A river of honey, a river of wine and 72 virgins. Since I have been studying the Quran, I know about the sweet life that waits there," the newspaper quoted Abdo as saying.

"But when the soldiers stopped me, I didn't press the switch. I changed my mind. I didn't want to die anymore," he said. "I'm sorry for what I did."

The boy's mother, Tamam Abdo, said her son was clearly exploited.

"It is forbidden to send him to fight," she said at her home, fighting back tears. "He is young, he is small, he should be in school. Someone pressured him."

Palestinian psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj, director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, said a recent survey by his group found that 36 percent of Palestinian youth ages 12 and older aspired to die "a martyr's death" fighting Israel.

"But to be honest I'm suspicious of the whole (Abdo) story because it was all on film. ... Maybe the Israeli intelligence is using this as a kind of propaganda," said Sarraj.

"Of course, there is also a Palestinian motive for sending him. Either way I consider it a crime."