Assassin 'was armed by elite soldier'

Rabin killing: Fresh evidence has cast new light on focus of inquiry

Eric Schwartz, an Israeli army sergeant in an elite unit, was charged yesterday with supplying military weapons and explosives to the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin.

Sgt Schwartz, the first suspect to be formally indicted, is accused of stealing arms and equipment from the Golani Brigade and handing it over to Yigal Amir, who shot dead Rabin on 4 November. Sgt Schwartz is alleged to have known that the weapons were to be used to attack Arabs.

As well as handing over arms to Yigal and his brother Hagai Amir, Sgt Schwartz is also accused of burying a cache of stolen army property, including weapons, in the backyard of his home. After Rabin was killed he dug them up and hid them in the house and car of another army sergeant.

During a search of Amir's house after the assassination, police found slabs of military explosives which Amir's mother said she thought were bars of soap. Other arms were buried at the back of the home under a yard which was used as a kindergarten.

Amir and another man, Dror Adani, who is considered by police to be central to the conspiracy, were also members of the Golani brigade. Hitherto, investigations into the background of the killing have focused on a militant right-wing student group at Bar-Ilan university, and not on army service.

As he entered a military court in Haifa where he was indicted, Sgt Schwartz covered his head with his khaki military jacket so completely that he had to be guided to his seat. He said: "It is not right what is happening here." His father Naftali, a dentist from the religious suburb of Bnei Brak, said his son was innocent and that the charges against him were "heartbreaking."

The Israeli government has recently been backing away from the idea of a conspiracy behind Mr Rabin's death and four out of eight of those originally detained have now been freed, although some of them may be charged later.

The change of tack came when Avishai Raviv, head of the extremist Eyal organisation, with which Amir was associated, was accused of being an agent of the Shin Bet domestic security police.

This enabled the right wing, which has been on the defensive since the assassination, to counter-attack the government, claiming that it was the Shin Bet agents provocateurs, and not the right, which set the stage for the killing of the prime minister. Moshe Shahal, the police minister, who had promoted the idea of a conspiracy, immediately began to back-pedal.

Nevertheless, the known facts about Amir and his group suggest that there was a conspiracy to resist the implementation of the Oslo accords by armed force. This involved the theft and storage of arms.

Most of the conspirators belonged to an extreme right wing group at Bar-Ilan university. Their central plan was evidently to attack Palestinians, emulating Baruch Goldstein who shot dead 29 worshippers in a mosque in Hebron last year.

But the fact that Amir was planning to murder the prime minister was well enough known for the Shin Bet to be tipped off in June by a member of the Bar-Ilan group. It failed to act.

nThe Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, will visit Cairo on Thursday for talks with the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, in their first meeting since Rabin's funeral last month.

Mr Peres will stay in Cairo for just a few hours for talks expected to focus on the Arab- Israeli peace process, the Foreign Minister, Amr Moussa, said yesterday. Egypt has tried to act as a mediator between Israel and both the Palestinians and Syria.