An alleged member of the Abu Nidal terrorist organization stabbed his teenage daughter to death not because of a clash of cultures - the original explanation given - but because she knew too much, prosecutors say.
In a federal indictment unsealed Thursday, Zein Isa and three other alleged members of the terrorist splinter group - all of them Palestianians living in the Midwest - were accused of conspiring to kill Jews, blow up the Israeli Embassy in Washington, buy weapons and smuggle money to their comrades.They were also accused in the slaying of 16-year-old Palestina "Tina" Isa, whose stabbing was captured on audiotape by FBI listening devices.
At Isa's murder trial in 1991, state prosecutors charged that the girl was killed because of a clash between her fundamentalist Muslim parents and their Americanized youngest daughter, who had taken a job and had a black boyfriend.
"There is no question her family problems were among the reasons she was killed," FBI agent James Nelson said Thursday. "But additional evidence indicates that her death was to silence her."
The indictment alleges the four planned to kill anyone within the group or outside who could expose their plots. The girl's slaying was the only one alleged to have been carried out.
The Abu Nidal group, which broke away from the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1973, was described in a State Department report in 1989 as the world's most dangerous terrorist group.
On the chilling, seven-minute recording, Isa is heard shouting in Arabic, "Die! Die quickly! Die, my daughter, die!" as he stabbed her. The girl's mother, Maria, held the girl down.