Palestinian fugitive dies in fall at embassy
SOFIA, BULGARIA • A Palestinian militant wanted for a 1986 killing in Israel plunged to his death Friday from the Palestinian embassy in Bulgaria, where he had been holed up for two months to avoid extradition, officials said.
Palestinians immediately accused Israel of killing Omar Nayef Zayed, 52. Israel denied involvement and Bulgarian authorities said they had yet to determine whether he fell, jumped or was pushed from the building.
Zayed was still alive Friday morning when an embassy staffer found him behind the four- storey building, but he died before paramedics could take him to a hospital, Bulgarian Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov said.
Video footage of the site afterward showed a pool of blood near the embassy, which is located in a leafy, quiet neighbourhood of the Bulgarian capital.
The Palestinian militant group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestin ( PFLP) initially said Zayed had been shot, but Ahmed al-Madbuh, the Palestinian ambassador in Sofia, did not repeat those claims. Bulgarian officials insisted there were no gunshot wounds.
Al-Madbuh called Zayed’s death a murder, blaming “continuing persecution by Israel.”
Emmanuel Nahshon, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said “this is not an Israeli issue,” but would not comment further.
Adding to the mystery, the death came hours after Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov returned from a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, where he discussed a 2015 Israeli extradition request for Zayed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Palestinian officials.
“I told all sides that our prosecution had received a request for extradition and now a court was to decide whether he will be extradited or not,” Borisov told parliament Friday.
Bulgarian authorities called on Zayed to surrender after Israel made the extradition request.
PFLP said Zayed was a member who with his brother and another Palestinian stabbed a Jewish student to death in Jerusalem’s Old City 1986. They received life sentences. In 1990, Zayed was hospitalized in Bethlehem after a hunger strike. He later escaped from the hospital.