KILLING PLOT

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30956, 12 January 1966, Page 11

KILLING PLOT

Egyptians On Trial CAIRO, January 11. The assassination of President Kennedy prompted a group of 11 persons now on trial for their lives to discuss the idea of killing President Nasser and the United States Ambassador, Mr Lucius Battle, the chief defendant said today. “But,” said a former oil company official, Hussein Tewfik, “we never went beyond the ideas. We considered them and then rejected them. We never actually plotted.” Tewfik and the 10 others pleaded not guilty to charges of attempting to assassinate President Nasser and overthrow the Government when their trial opened yesterday. Three other co-defendants, not directly involved in the plot but charged with knowing about it and failing to inform the authorities, also pleaded not guilty. Tewfik and two of his group pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of possessing unlicensed arms and explosives, however.

Tewfik, cross-examined by the Court, said his group objected to Egypt’s Arab policy He said they believed its interests lay in union with the Sudan alone, because “any plan to bring Arabs together only serves the British.”

Plane Crash.—Eleven persons died when a Colombian Air Force plane crashed into a hillside five miles from the international airport at Bogota on Saturday night.—Bogota, January 11.