NEW YORK - A right-wing Jewish group has revived plans to mount armed patrols of Jewish areas in Brooklyn following an FBI warning that terrorists could be planning to use fuel tanker trucks in new attacks.
Rabbi Yakove Lloyd, who founded the Jewish Defence Group in 1985, said yesterday the first patrol of about 50 people, a dozen of them armed, would begin tonight (NZ time).
Patrols would be carried out two or three times a week, he said.
The group abandoned a plan last week to patrol Jewish neighbourhoods with two groups of 25 men and women, some armed with shotguns, after a public uproar and police warnings that anyone with an unlicensed weapon would be arrested.
The original patrol plan was conceived after CBS News carried an interview with accused bomber Abdul Rahman Yasin, conducted in Iraq, in which Yasin said the group that planted a bomb in a World Trade Centre basement in 1993 had initially planned to attack Jewish neighbourhoods in Brooklyn.
Lloyd said the patrol plan had been revived when the FBI said tanker trucks could be used in attacks in the United States or against US interests overseas, with Jewish schools and synagogues as possible targets.
A New York police spokesman declined to comment on the patrol plan.
- REUTERS
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