Yitzhak Rabin's assassin was trained by the Shin Bet security service, shooting pistols at its firing range and attending its lectures on protection practices, an Israeli newspaper reported Monday.
In a Tel Aviv court, the confessed gunman, Yigal Amir, said he acted alone and had tried several times to kill the prime minister. Police contend Rabin was assassinated Nov. 4 as part of a right-wing conspiracy."Nobody worked with me. Don't start blaming other people, blame me," a calm, smiling Amir, wearing a gray sweater and a skullcap, said Monday as his parents sobbed in a back row.
Amir said that when he re-enacted the crime for police last week at the Tel Aviv square where he killed Rabin, he thought of Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks. "I said, `Finally, justice is served,' " he told reporters.
Police said Amir would be charged with murder, attempted murder and conspiracy once the investigation is completed. His detention was extended by 11 days.
In an unconfirmed account citing unidentified security sources, the Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported Monday that Amir was trained by the Shin Bet as a security guard in 1992 before being sent on a government mission to Latvia. Initial reports said Amir was dispatched to teach Hebrew in the capital, Riga, but the newspaper said his real job was to protect the Jewish community in Latvia.
In preparation, Amir was given marksmanship training at a Shin Bet firing range, the newspaper said, and he attended lectures on Shin Bet protection practices. In one of those lectures, he learned that security could most easily be penetrated when a target was arriving at an event or leaving one.
Amir shot and killed Rabin as the prime minister was about to get into his car after a peace rally.
Rabin's successor, Shimon Peres, was evasive when asked about the report that Amir was trained by the Shin Bet. "I don't believe that's what would make him murder. lost his reason, and everything else is not important," Peres told reporters in Brussels, Belgium, where he signed a trade accord with the European Union.
The Shin Bet reports directly to the prime minister.
Yaakov Peri, the Shin Bet chief in 1992, refused to comment Monday.
Police on Monday announced the arrest of an eighth suspect in the assassination. The suspect was identified as Avshalom Weinberg, a 24-year-old student at Bar Ilan University, where Amir studied law, computers and religious studies.
Police conspiracy claims were contradicted this week by the head of the Shin Bet, who reportedly told a commission of inquiry that Amir was a "lone assassin."
"People like Yigal Amir don't share their plans with the people around them and disclose their intentions," the chief, who can only be identified by the initial C., told the closed-door session Sunday, according to Yediot Ahronot.
"They communicate only with God," C. said.
The Shin Bet, meanwhile, was attacked by right-wing politicians Monday over media reports that one suspect held in the Rabin killing had been a security service mole.
The suspect, Avishai Raviv, head of the right-wing extremist group Eyal, was questioned for several days after the killing and then released. He has dismissed the media reports as nonsense.
Opposition leaders demanded an investigation of Raviv's role, citing reports that suggested he not only worked as an informer but was used as an instigator to malign the opposition.
An Israel TV reporter said Sunday said that at a right-wing protest on Oct. 5, Raviv came up to him to show him posters of Rabin in a Nazi uniform, an extremely inflammatory image in Israel. Raviv returned a few minutes later to make sure the reporter had used the posters in his broadcast.
Since Rabin's killing, the right wing has been accused of creating the atmosphere for the assassination with harsh rhetoric intended to undermine the legitimacy of the government.
Monday, right-wing politicians demanded a thorough investigation.
"The fact that it was he (Raviv) who distributed the poster of Rabin in an SS uniform is something very strange and worrisome," said former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of the opposition Likud Party.