Days after his release last Wednesday, convicted Lebanese Druse terrorist Samir Kuntar told Arab television stations that he plans to earn a master's degree in "military resistance" and reiterated his commitment to kill again.
Samir Kuntar gestures as he symbolically breaks through makeshift prison bars during celebrations for his release in Beirut. [file]
Photo: AP [file]
Kuntar said he was "proud" of killing Israelis, and "Allah willing, I will get the chance to kill more Israelis," in an interview with Lebanon's Future TV, according to a transcript provided by The Middle East Media Research Institute.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a Washington-based watchdog organization, published excerpts this week of a number of Arab-language interviews with the released prisoner.
Kuntar, who served 29 years in an Israeli prison for his part in killing a father and his daughter as well as an off-duty policeman in Nahariya in 1979, was released with four other Lebanese prisoners on July 16 in exchange for the bodies of IDF reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.
The day after he was released, Kuntar told Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV: "This time yesterday, I was still in their hands. But right now, there is nothing I'd like more than to face them again," according to a MEMRI transcript. "I ask Allah to make this happen very soon."
Kuntar, a member of the Palestine Liberation Front, and four others sailed from south Lebanon in April 1979 to Nahariya, where they murdered police officer Eliahu Shahar after he stumbled upon the gang. After breaking into the apartment of 28-year-old Danny Haran, they took him and his four-year-old daughter Einat hostage and then to the beach below. After a shootout ensued between the gunmen and police, Kuntar shot Danny Haran and bashed Einat's head on rocks and with the butt of his rifle, according to Israeli security sources. Two-year-old Yael Haran was accidentally smothered to death while hiding from the terrorists.
