Today They Give Crystal, Back Then They Gave Weapons

Czech protocol gifts used to be more hardcore

A few more details have come out in the Czech press about the firearms found inside the residence of the late Palestinian Ambassador Jamal al Jamal. A few new details, plus one terrific quote.

According to the Prague Post:

The police revealed 12 arms in two suitcases and one plastic bag on the spot of the explosion, the paper [Lidové Noviny (LN)] writes, citing sources close to the investigation.

When Palestinian diplomats arrived on the spot, they wanted to mark the suitcases and bag as diplomatic luggage, but the police had already found the guns.

-- snip --

According to its sources, it were [sic] four Škorpion vz.61 submachine guns and eight pistols - one Smith&Wesson, one Tokarev and six CZs made in Czechoslovakia.

Only one of the arms was officially registered in the Czech Republic - a pistol whose official owner is former Palestinian ambassador Mohammed Salaymeh who was replaced by Jamal in Prague last summer.

-- snip --

It is still unclear whether the Czechoslovak-made pistols were first sent to Palestinians in the Middle East and then smuggled to Prague or whether they have never left Czech territory, LN writes.

Salaymeh claims that the second alternative is true.

"Czech representatives give crystal to foreign guests now, in the past it were weapons," Salaymeh told LN.

I love that quote. Today it's crystal for those diplomatic gift-giving occasions, but back in the day it was weapons.

Why did they ever switch? Is there anyone who wouldn't rather get a Skorpion submachine gun than some fancy glasses?



The story continues:

Ambassador Jamal died in a blast of a safe deposit in the Palestinian embassy building in Prague-Suchdol on Jan. 1.

Czech investigators believe that Jamal was fatally injured by a bomb that he wanted to use to secure the safe. The investigation is still underway, however.

"According to police investigators, 200 grams of a yet unknown explosive exploded. The blast was very strong. Even if Jamal survived it, he would have lost both hands," said a source acquainted with a police report on the case.

The Palestinian diplomats were moving to a new seat. It appears that Jamal wanted to check the safe and secure it against opening, a source told LN.

A Czech diplomat requesting anonymity told the paper that the Foreign Ministry does not focus on the technical details anymore. "We are now primarily interested in how are the Palestinians going to solve the whole case administratively, for example, whether there will be an apology," the diplomat said.

The Palestinians no doubt owe an apology to their host country's government. However, doesn't the Czech government owe all of us an apology for having equipped terrorist groups - the PLO for one, but also many others - back in the 1980s?

Czech Police: Twelve Firearms In Palestinian Ambassador's Safe

Fine small arms are expressive gifts of Czech national pride

The first round of reports about the death of Palestinian Ambassador al-Jamar in Prague mentioned that local police found some firearms inside the safe in his residence. Czech police spokesmen at first declined to give any details about the weapons but, after rumors of up to 70 weapons began to circulate, the national police chief today confirmed for a Czech daily newspaper that there were twelve weapons, and that they consisted of both pistols and sub-machineguns.

The police say they are investigating where the weapons came from. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Deputy Foreign Minister said they were gifts to the Palestinian mission from the former Czechoslovakian government.

Deputy Palestinian Foreign Minister Taysir Jaradat said Sunday he met with his Czech counterpart and was asked about the weapons.

"We told them that these guns have been in the embassy for a long time — going back to the former regime of Czechoslovakia — and these guns were either licensed in the embassy or were given as gifts to the ambassador," he told Voice of Palestine radio station Sunday.

I can see how that might happen in the normal course of diplomatic pleasantries. Some Czech tchotchkes got exchanged in the ceremonial climate of toasts, banquets, speeches, and formal greetings? Okay, no big thing.

But I do wonder what diplomatic occasion it was that called for the gift of guns. Maybe a Palestinian National Day celebration? No, I seem to recall that Semtex was the Czechoslovakian gift of choice for those.

More likely it was a visit to Prague by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. I'm sure he always needed another gun to accessorize his faux guerrilla fighter outfits, and his favorite ones came from the Warsaw Pact countries.

That one looks like a Polish PM-63

There will be more to come on this after the Czech police run down the serial numbers on those old pistols and sub-machineguns. The StB did turn over its records to the post-Communist government, I assume?

Accidents and Artifacts In Prague

On Mission Impossible, only the taped message self-destructed in five seconds. But something more robust than that occurred to fatally injure Ambassador Jamal al-Jamal when he opened a safe inside his official residence in Prague.

The Foreign Minister of the State of Palestine, Riyad al-Malki, speaking to Voice of Palestine Radio news, described the death of his Ambassador to the Czech Republic as a “work accident.” I don't disagree.

It’s a rare accident when an Ambassador dies from his own inexpert handling of explosives, however, the incidence of that type of misadventure does seem to occur primarily among diplomats from the State of Palestine.

The Czech authorities are still investigating and we might find out more in time, but at present most news accounts seem to be in agreement that Ambassador Jamal al-Jamal triggered a small explosion – judging by the lack of evident damage to the room he was in, I’d guess it was very small, on the scale of a hand grenade – when he tried to remove a package containing several firearms from a safe in his official residence. The residence is part of a newly-constructed Palestinian embassy compound, and the safe had been relocated from the old Palestinian embassy, which had been occupied as far back as the 1980s.

Initially, there had been speculation that Ambassador al-Jamal must have triggered an emergency destruction device of some kind when he opened the safe. I didn’t believe that scenario, because, while such devices do exist, they destroy documents and computer media by incineration or chemical action rather than by explosion. As someone who remembers when U.S. embassies used sodium nitrate emergency burn barrels, I know that those things are not going to explode on you (although they might burn the building down).

What’s more, Czech police reported that there was a second safe in the residence but they found no explosives in that one, so whatever detonated and killed al-Jamal wasn’t common to the safes in his mission.

There is an internal Palestinian disagreement as to whether or not the safe was in regular use. The first news reports, which quoted the Palestinian Foreign Minister, said the safe hadn’t been opened since the 1980s. Apparently it was just forgotten and had been sitting in a corner somewhere ever since that bygone era when the PLO was trafficking Czech-made Semtex explosive and Skorpian machine pistols to allies such as the IRA. But today, Palestinian Embassy spokesman Nabil El-Fahel told Czech radio that the safe was in regular use and was opened and closed almost daily.

Which story is worse for the Palestinian State, in so far as its relations with the Czech Republic? Acknowledging that they kept firearms and small explosive charges in an active safe inside their diplomatic mission and residence as a matter of routine, or, that a forgotten artifact of a more militant past was opened in all innocence by a modern, peace-loving, diplomat who had no idea what was inside? That's a tough call.

Prague Police Chief Martin Vondrasek told Czech radio news that the firearms in the safe were not registered, but he did not describe them further. The Czech newsweekly Respeckt reported today that they were “enough to arm a unit of ten men,” which could mean that there were only ten weapons.

I suppose an arsenal that size might impress Central Europeans, but c’mon, I personally have three pistols I keep in a bedside table plus two shotguns in a closet. And my residence doesn’t even have diplomatic inviolbility, not that I need it in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

One last thought: do you suppose there are more booby-trapped arms caches in Palestinian embassies and diplomatic residences elsewhere?

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P.S. at 7PM

I learned from press reports tonight that Ambassador al-Jamal was first posted to Prague in 1984 and for several years thereafter, then departed before returning last October as Ambassador. Could that possibly resolve the conflicting statements about the nature of the safe that he opened? If it really was a left-over item from the PLO mission in Prague in the '80s, as the Palestinian Foreign Minister has claimed, could it possibly have been a safe that al-Jamal used back then? If so, he may have known what was in it, and thought that he could open it safely.