DAR AL HARB - U.S.A. - N.Y.: THE TRUTH COMES OUT

Killer's daughter admits it was political
BY MAHMOUD HABBOUSH
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

GAZA CITY - Ali Abu Kamal's relatives say they are tired of lying about why the Palestinian opened fire on the observation deck of Empire State Building, killing a tourist and injuring six other people before committing suicide.

Kamal's widow insisted after the shooting spree that the attack was not politically motivated.

She said that her husband had become suicidal after losing $300,000 in a business venture.

But in a stunning admission, Kamal's 48-year-old daughter Linda told the Daily News that her dad wanted to punish the U.S. for supporting Israel - and revealed her mom's 1997 account was a cover story crafted by the Palestinian Authority.

"A Palestinian Authority official advised us to say the attack was not for political reasons because that would harm the peace agreement with Israel," she told The News on Friday. "We didn't know that he was martyred for patriotic motivations, so we repeated what we were told to do."

But three days after the shootings, Kamal's family got a copy of a letter that was found on his body, they said. The letter said he planned the violence as a political statement, his daughter said.

"When we wanted to clarify that to the media, nobody listened to us," she said. "His goal was patriotic. He wanted to take revenge from the Americans, the British, the French and the Israelis."

She said the family became certain that he carried out the attack for political reasons after reading his diary.

"He wrote that after he raised his children and made sure that his family was all right he decided to avenge in the highest building in America to make sure they get his message," said Linda, who works for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.

She said her mom burned the diary, fearing that it would cause the family trouble.

Original story at the New York Times:

February 24, 1997
Shots Send Empire State Crowd Fleeing
By ROBERT D. MCFADDEN

A man wielding a semiautomatic handgun killed a tourist, wounded six others and then fatally shot himself in the head on the crowded 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building yesterday afternoon. The wild shooting spree touched off panic among 90 to 100 terrified sightseers and their children, some of whom were trampled in a stampede to escape.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said last night that the gunman had tentatively been identified from Arabic papers and an Israeli identity card in his possession as Ali Abu Kamal, 69, a Palestinian from Ramallah, in the West Bank. He said the man arrived in New York last Christmas Eve and later traveled to Florida, where he obtained an identity card with a Melbourne, Fla., address that enabled him to buy his gun in late January. He recently returned to New York.

While the Joint Terrorism Task Force was involved in the investigation, the Mayor said the gunman's motive was unknown, and he cautioned against drawing any conclusions about terrorism or the man's Palestinian background. At the same time, a senior law enforcement official said that conversations the gunman had with others just before the shootings suggested that he might have been unbalanced.

''He seems like a disturbed guy with grievances not against Jews, but against the whole world,'' the official said. He said the man approached some tourists and asked to have the Statue of Liberty pointed out. A short dialogue ensued, the official said, quoting some of the 30 witnesses to the shootings.

''I love Americans and I love America,'' the man said.

''Where are you from?'' someone asked.

''I'm from Egypt,'' he replied.

''Then he walked to a corner and pulled out a .380 semiautomatic and opened fire,'' the official said. ''Then he shot himself.''

It was the worst bloodshed at the famed 102-story 1931 skyscraper in more than a half century, since a twin-engine B-25 Army bomber lost in a fog plowed into the 79th floor in July 1945, killing 14 people and injuring 26 others in a blazing spectacle high over midtown Manhattan.

Yesterday, as tourists, many of them from abroad, flocked to the Art Deco landmark at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street and ascended ear-popping elevators to take in views of the city on a cool, cloudless afternoon, they were joined by Mr. Kamal, who was wearing a blue blazer and dark topcoat. He mingled with sightseers looking out from the eastern side of the deck.

Witnesses who moments earlier had been admiring the unlimited vistas of a quietly beautiful Sunday told of sudden gunfire popping all around the gunman as he strode along the deck, of bleeding victims falling with wounds to the head and body, and of fearful shouts and pandemonium and people running.

''Everybody was yelling, really going berserk,'' Stef Nys, a 36-year-old businessman from Belgium, said. ''People were falling all over each other.'' He said he pulled children out of the way of the stumbling, rushing crowds. But at least six people, including two toddlers, were injured.
The police were called immediately, but witnesses said it took some minutes for aid to arrive. In the meantime, some tourists helped the wounded. Gerard Guntner, 43, of Jersey City, N.J., found a man with a bullet wound in the head lying on the deck.

''He was bleeding profusely,'' Mr. Guntner said. ''He was coughing blood. I took towels and wrapped them around his head. I just said, 'Hang in there.' ''

One man grabbed T-shirts from shelves in the observation deck gift shop and packed them under the victims' heads. Others, terrified, ran for stairs and elevators, crowding and pushing in their panic.

When police officers and paramedics reached the scene of the shootings, which occurred about 5 P.M., they found victims slumped on the tiles and against the parapet, and others who had crawled inside the glass-enclosed souvenir and snack shop.

They also found a .380 semiautomatic Beretta, and nearby the man who had apparently fired it, sprawled on the deck and bleeding profusely from a self-inflicted wound from which he would die in a few hours.

''There was a shot in his temple,'' said Leslie Dozsa, 42, of West Islip, L.I., who had run around from the west deck to find the carnage.

''He was lying face down at first, and then he or someone else turned him over. You could see he was alive because he was breathing. You could see his dentures had slipped and they were coming in and out of his mouth with his breath.''

Police Officer Thomas Verni was one of the first on the scene. ''It was hell on wheels,'' he said. ''Carnage. The shooter was on the floor, bleeding. We were trying to do what we could. There were so many victims to attend to. They said they just saw him start shooting people. People were shaking. It was a very traumatic situation.''

As ambulances and other emergency vehicles with wailing sirens and flashing lights rushed to the scene, crowds gathered on the streets to gawk upward at a building that has long been a symbol of New York City, the scene of King Kong's 1933 demise and a place where more than two million tourists annually surrender their hearts to Manhattan.

Many who gathered were unaware of what had happened. Rumors spread that someone had jumped. Soon the victims were brought out on stretchers and rushed to Bellevue and St. Vincent's Hospitals, while more than 30 witnesses were put in vans and taken to the Midtown South Precinct station on West 35th Street, where the police tried to sift the tangled events of the apparently unprovoked shootings.

The gunman, unconscious, was taken to Bellevue, where he died at 11:04 P.M. Mayor Giuliani, at a late-evening City Hall news conference, said that Mr. Kamal had been born in Jaffa in 1927, and that other aspects of his background were being investigated. A Federal law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the F.B.I. had found no references to the assailant in its intelligence and criminal files.

As Mayor Giuliani went to the hospitals to visit and pray with the wounded and injured, the police said that 14 people, including the gunman, were victims of the shootings and the panic that followed: 8 were shot and 6 others were injured, most of them in the stampede, though one suffered an asthma attack.

The man slain by the gunman was not immediately identified, but was said to be a musician in his 20's from Denmark. Shot in the head, he was pronounced dead at the observation deck. While his identity was unclear, Helene Malmlos, 25, a visitor from Sweden, said she and two girlfriends had just met four men, including the slain man, who called himself Chris. She quoted him as saying he was about to become a father, and that he and his friends were members of a rock band called the Bush Pilots.

In addition to the gunman, three men who had been shot were being treated at Bellevue Hospital last night. One was identified as 29-year-old Matthew Gross of Montclair, N.J., the lead singer of the Bush Pilots, who had been shot in the head. Mario Carmona, 52, of Argentina, and another man, 32, had both been shot in the neck. All three were listed in critical condition.

Four women were treated at Bellevue for ankle and wrist injures suffered in the rush, as were two children: a 5-month-old boy whose head had been banged in the melee and his 18-month-old sister, who was not seriously injured. All were released later.

At St. Vincent's Hospital, three people who had been shot were being treated. A French couple from Verdun -- a 36-year-old woman and her 44-year-old husband, both shot in the buttocks -- were in serious condition. Their 16-year-old daughter was not hit by gunfire but was being treated for trauma. And a Bronx man, Hector Mendez, 34, was in stable condition at St. Vincent's.

Hospital officials said seven other people were being treated for emotional trauma.
The police said the Empire State Building had no metal detectors to scan its millions of visitors to the 86th floor outdoor observation deck and the 102d floor glass-enclosed deck. Many other tourist sites in the city, including the World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty, have metal detectors to scan crowds.

Howard Rubinstein, a spokesman for the Empire State Building, said the building's security cameras had picked up the gunman after he bought a ticket in the basement and rode an escalator to the elevators. ''He had a long coat and the gun was under his coat,'' Mr. Rubinstein said. ''You couldn't see it.''

The Empire State Building, which was closed after the shooting, opened on May 1, 1931, and for decades reigned as the world's tallest building until topped by the 110-story towers of the World Trade Center and other towers in Chicago. The graceful granite facade and pinnacle are often bathed in lights of various colors to commemorate the season, holidays or special events. Yesterday it was all-white lighting.

The shootings came in a busy month for the building. On Valentine's Day, Feb. 14, 34 couples were married on the 86th floor observation deck, and last Thursday 159 people competed in the 20th annual Empire State Building Run-Up, in which contestants race up 1,576 steps to the observatory.

Correction: February 26, 1997, Wednesday

Pertinent Links:

1) Killer's daughter admits it was political