Letter: Embassy bombing

Sir: Neville Nagler, director general of the Board of Deputies of British Jews (letter, 4 December), tries to give the impression that Samar Alami, believed by many to have been wrongfully convicted of involvement in the 1994 London bombing of the Israeli embassy, was motivated by anti- Jewish feeling and supported the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in its terrorist attacks of the 1970s.

Many recall her tireless work for human rights. Her campaigning for Palestinian freedoms has nothing to do with religion or anti-Jewish feelings. She had been interested in the PFLP in the late 1980s and has made no secret of this. The PFLP is now a mainstream political party and renounced all military activity outside the occupied territories in the late 1970s, at least a decade before Ms Alami considered joining.

Mr Nagler refers to the appalling atrocity carried out in Argentina, a week before the 1994 London bombings, in which 96 people were killed in an explosion at a Buenos Aires Jewish centre. Speculation that there was some connection between the explosions in Buenos Aires and London evaporated when it emerged that the Argentine bombings were motivated by anti-Semitism.

DANIEL GUEDALLA

London E8