King murdered by FBI, Abernathy charges

Civil rights leaders in the United
States have charged that the FBI -
murdered Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. in 1968.

The reverend Ralph Abernathy,
former president of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference
and the man who stood beside King
as he was shot down in April, 1968
at Memphis Tennessee, told the
U.S. House Select Committee on
Assassinations last week in
Washington, D.C. that he believes
that_a conspiracy existed to
Murder King which included the
FBI and was backed by the
nation’s most powerful economic
interests.

Abernathy said that he did not
believe that the man convicted of
Kings death, James Earl Ray,
acted alone in the murder. ‘Ray
May have been the trigger man,
but I do believe that more persons
Were involved,” Abernathy said.

Ray, who himself, appeared
before the committee last week,
has claimed that he did not murder
King and that the guilty plea which
resulted in his conviction was a

fraud” that was manipulated by
his attorneys and the prosecution.
Ray has called for a new trial
based on evidence which he says he
1S now ready to reveal about the
Teal conspiracy to kill King.

Abernathy told the committee
that he did not believe that Ray

could have carried out the murder
and made his escape through
Canada and to Europe without
assistance. He also revealed that in
a letter from Ray asking his
support in the call for a new trial,
Ray said that he received money
from sources which he would
reveal during the course of a trial.

“This was not a demented sick
mind that destroyed Martin Luther
King,” Abernathy told the com-
mittee, “‘When Dr. King began to
bring poor people together who
separately are a minority but

together are a powerful majority -

—Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos
and poor whites — then someone in
a very high position decided that
they must eliminate him.”

Abernathy said it was highly
significant that King was mur-
dered while leading a demon-
stration in support of striking
sanitation workers in Memphis. It
makred a turning point in King’s
leadership from struggle over
legal civil rights to economic
issues, he said.

The murder also took place at a.

time when King was beginning to
speak out against the war in
Vietnam, Abernathy said. ‘‘He
condemned a senseless, immoral
war in Vietnam. He was a Black
man who had started to speak out
on foreign policy and on economic
issues, had started to expose the

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roots of poverty in this country.”

Ray’s testimony. before the
committee raised a host of
questions which indicated that he
was involved with others in the
King murder. Although Ray
claimed that he did not shoot King,
he did admit that he purchased a
rifle, scope and ammunition and
transported it to Memphis where it
was used in the murder. He worked
in co-operation with a man named
“Raoul,” he said, who supplied
him with large amounts of money
in order to travel back and forth
across the continent and to and
from Canada several times before
the assassination.

After the shooting of King Ray
testified that he fled across the
border into Canada and obtained
a passport using as an alias the
name of a Toronto policeman,
George Sneyd. Ray said that he
even telephoned Sneyd to check if
he had ever applied for a passport.
Then, with no visible means of
support, Ray crossed the Atlantic
to Portugal. By the time of his
arrest he was in London preparing
to go to Angola as a mercernary.
His prepared statement offered no
explanation of how he paid for his
world travels.

‘Ray contends that he did not
shoot King, however, and that he
turned the murder weapon over to
the man named ‘‘Raoul,’’ whose
last name remained a mystery.

If he had killed King, Ray said,
he never would have left his
fingerprints on the rifle. He in-
sisted that even as a petty criminal
he was too smart to leave his prints
on a potentially incriminating
piece of evidence. Ray admitted
under questioning that his story
conflicted in many ways with

J. Edgar: “Send the usual condolences and keep up the |
aood work!” |

earlier evidence he had given, but
said that the errors did not
disprove his claim that he did not
murder King.

The impact of Abernathy’s
charge, Ray’s testimony and the
focus of public attention on the
hearing, apparently moved the
Assassinations Committee to
counter the growing suspicion that
a conspiracy did exist. In a move

hotly contested by Ray’s lawyers,
the committee recruited a former
British policeman to testify against
Ray, claiming that he had received
a confession from Ray of King’s
murder. Ray’s lawyers, however,
responded that the former
policeman was not a credible
witness as he _ had_ been
dishonorably discharged from the
force for bribery and perjury.

U.S. forming reactionary block
in Middle East, says Israeli CP

Continued from page 1

through U.S. intervention. In
announcing the invitation to Sadat
and Begin, Carter-told the New
York Times that ‘“‘among other
things, Mr. Begin and Mr. Sadat
wanted to discuss the possibilities
of sending American troops to the
Middle East.”

Alan Solomonow, director of
‘Middle East Peace Now’’, a
committee with offices in New
York: called the summit a move
“motivated by desperation more
than anything else’. He said all
large powers should stay out of the
Middle East and that if guarantees
of security were required it could
be arranged through the United
Nations.

Gail Pressberg, director of the
Middle East Peace Project, a
project of the American Friends
Service Committee, told the press
last week as well, ‘‘After Vietnam,
I doubt if the American public
would allow American troops into
such a volatile conflict as the
Middle East.”

Pressberg said that ‘“‘all sorts of
deals are going on” with the in-
tention of circumventing the
Palestinians and keeping the
Soviet Union out of a peace set-
tlement. ‘“‘The administration has
adopted a policy of containment to
keep the Soviets out, but also to
protect U.S. political and economic
interests.”

James Zogby, national chair-
person of the U.S. Palestine
Human Rights Committee charged
that the Washington summit is ‘‘a
U.S. effort to circumvent not only
Palestinian aspirations but also the
international consensus of con-
ditions for a Middle East peace.

“Of course there can be no U.S.

troops in the Middle East. The
American people will never allow
such a dangerous intervention.”
The United States’ strategy was
described as one of trying to
establish a ‘‘comprehensive
political-military bloc’’ of reac-
tionary regimes in the Middle
East, the Persian Gulf and part of
Africa, by Meir Vilner, general
secretary of the Israeli Communist
Party in a recent interview in the
Hungarian newspaper’ Nep-
szabadsag.

-The reactionary block, Milner
said, would consist of Israel,
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Even though Begin refuses to
return occupied Arab land, Sadat
is continuing to negotiate with
Begin because, ‘“‘his aim is not to
solve the conflict, the question of
the Palestinians,’ Milner said,
“but to attain some _ separate

bargain that would make possible
the attainment of Washington’s
well considered designs of creating
a pro-imperialist bloc aimed
against the progressive govern-
ments of the Mideast, the Soviet
Union and the socialist countries.”

Instead of urging the establish-
ment of a Palestinian state, Sadat
is now calling for the West Bank to
be under the control of Jordan and
the Gaza region under Egypt,
Milner pointed out. “It would be
illusory to think that peace can be
attained without the Palestinian
Liberation Organization. Likewise
itis illusory to think that the Soviet
Union can be left out of the process
of the settlement. No effort should
be spared -for reconvening the
Geneva conference with the in-
clusion of all interested sides,
including the PLO.”’

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 25, 1978—Page 7

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