Reuters – by JAN LOPATKA AND JASON HOVET
(Reuters) – The Palestinian ambassador to Prague was killed on Wednesday in an explosion that was triggered when he opened the door to a safe, Czech police said.
Jamal al-Jamal, 56, died in hospital after the incident at his home on the morning of New Year’s Day.
“According to information from the investigation so far, this was definitely not a terrorist attack,” national police president Martin Cervicek said on Czech Television.
Police spokeswoman Andrea Zoulova said an explosive – which may have been part of a security mechanism – went off after the safe was opened. “With the greatest probability, an explosive device placed on the door of the safe was triggered,” she said.
The Palestinian foreign ministry, in a statement reported by the official WAFA news agency, said the blast happened minutes after Jamal opened a safe that had come from the embassy’s old offices.
The mission is in the course of moving into new premises next to the residence in a suburb of the capital.
Zoulova told reporters: “The possibilities include inexpert handling of an explosive device or its spontaneous detonation … The device was in a safe and was triggered after the door of the safe was opened.”
Some safes can be fitted with small charges to destroy secret documents in the event of the lock being tampered with.
A spokesman for the embassy, Nabil el-Fahel, said he had no details on what it was that blew up. “We need to wait for the results of the police investigation,” he said.
Jamal suffered lethal injuries to his head, chest and abdomen, surgeon Daniel Langer told Czech television.
No one else was injured in the explosion, police said, although a spokeswoman for Prague’s emergency medical services said a 52-year-old woman was treated for smoke inhalation and shock. Jamal’s family was at home at the time of the blast.
No sign of damage to the two-storey house was visible outside, but police cordoned off part of the street while bomb experts searched the premises.
PALESTINIANS SENDING TEAM
The Palestinian foreign ministry said it would send a team to Prague to help with the investigation.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki, quoted by WAFA, said Jamal was “martyred in the line of duty”.
Born in Beirut to a refugee family, Jamal joined Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1975 and served in PLO missions to Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia in the 1980s.
Part of the diplomatic corps of the Palestinian Authority that governs the West Bank under interim peace accords with Israel, he had been its consul in Alexandria since 2005. He took up the ambassador post to Prague only in October 2013.
Communist Czechoslovakia maintained friendly relations with the PLO in the 1980s, but since the 1989 collapse of communist rule the EU and NATO member country has been supportive of Israel.
The Czechs cast the lone European “no” vote against the Palestinian Authority’s bid for semi-statehood at the United Nations in November 2012. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the Czech Republic the Jewish state’s best friend in Europe.
(Additional reporting by Noah Browning and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Mark Trevelyan)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/01/us-czech-palestinian-idUSBREA0008E20140101
My Fellow Patriots:
“….According to information from the investigation so far, this was definitely not a terrorist attack,” national police president Martin Cervicek said on Czech Television.
Police spokeswoman Andrea Zoulova said an explosive – which may have been part of a security mechanism – went off after the safe was opened.”
YEAH,… RIGHT!!,.. because every Palesteinian Envoy has thier safes wired to blow!!!
Its seems clear that, “this was definitely not a terrorist attack..”,….. despite the fact this has ISRAEL written all over it!!,.. but,.. oh yeahhhhhhh,… whenever ISRAEL does these kinds of criminal acts,.. its NEVER a “terrorist” act,….
Uh-huh,…. sure,.. right,…
Nothing to see here folks,.. just some guy’s safe blowing up in his face,… happens everyday,… move along,… move along,.. Israel had NOTHING to do with this,… move along now,…… move along…..
JD – US Marines – Always amazes me how quickly they figure out this was NOT a terrorist act sometimes!,.. you heard the man,.. move along,… move along,…
Thanks JD.. Proud of you and all our brothers and sisters in the Trenches…. Looking forward to having you and Henry back broadcasting tomorrow…
I agree with above! The parasitic state of israel has wired his safe, the terrorist state killed him, how can this not be a terrorist attack? Israel is a state of terrorists, built on stolen land that they acquired by terrorizing!!! I hate them with all my heart and will relish the day they pay for what they have done… I will be up front with popcorn cheering their demise!!!! God bless us all…
This isn’t funny but it is.
“….this was definitely not a terrorist attack.”
Uh huh, sure. I’m sure the Mossad claimed right away after the bomb went off that they had nothing to do with it and everyone believed them.
“Police spokeswoman Andrea Zoulova said an explosive-which may have been part of a security mechanism-went off after the safe was opened.”
Yep…everybody knows that security mechanisms always blow up in peoples faces. Not to mention any valuables or important stuff your doing your best to protect get blown up, also. And here I was thinking that safes were safe.
“with the greatest probability, that an explosive device placed on the door of the safe was triggered.”
No shit? Really? I’ll bet some fiat paper debt notes the Palestinian Ambassador was pretty surprised when the bomb he didn’t know anything about went off in his face. Which brings me to this….
“Jamal suffered lethal injuries to head, chest and abdomen…”
Which leads me to speculate that Ambassador Jamal was killed as soon as he opened the door to the safe and not minutes later as the Reuters article above claims. The article claims the Palestinian foreign ministry says this and yet a spokesman for the embassy says he has no details on what it was that blew up.
So which is it? Either they know what it was or they don’t. Are the right hands not talking to the left hands? I guess I’m supposed to believe that Palestinians don’t own cell phones.
Then at the bottom of the article the writers tie it all back to Israel again…of course without saying that Israel had anything to do with it…lol.
Couldn’t post this story due to the copyright (In fact, I hope it is OK for me to share the link in the comments. If not, Admin., Please delete. 😉 ) It gives a few more details.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_CZECH_EXPLOSION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-01-01-11-51-00
He removed “some of the papers” and asked his wife to get him a pen and paper so he could document the contents. (They had just moved in. Their stuff was still unpacked and in boxes) Those papers still exist/were not destroyed. I want to know what is in those papers that made them worth booby-trapping the safe. We can only guess at what was in the rest, that were still in the safe.
“Not a terrorist attack?” What are they kidding?
How stupid do they think we are?
It’s NEVER a terrorist attack when the MOSSAD does it.