Inquiry into jail killing of Jewish extremist

The authorities have launched an investigation into the killing of the Jewish extremist Earl Krugel, who was apparently murdered by a fellow inmate last Friday at a medium-security federal prison in Phoenix, Arizona.

Krugel, 62, a member of the Jewish Defence League (JDL), was serving a 20-year sentence for his part in a conspiracy unmasked in 2001 to bomb a mosque in Los Angeles, and an office of the Arab-American Congressman Darrell Issa, a California Republican.

He was convicted along with Irv Rubin, at the time the leader of the JDL. In 2002 Rubin died in a Los Angeles prison in what was officially ruled a suicide but which his followers maintain was murder.

In the case of Krugel, his wife, Lola, told FBI agents that a fellow inmate had struck him on the head with a concrete block. "Earl never saw it coming," she said. He had been at the Federal Correctional Institution for three days when he died.