Washington, DC — Earl Krugel, member of the Jewish Defense League, was killed by an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix, Arizona, on November 4. The FBI released a statement on Saturday saying that the federal authorities opened a homicide investigation on the killing of Earl Krugel.
Krugel, 62, was serving a 20-year prison sentence for his role in a plot to blow up a Los Angeles-area mosque, the office of an Arab-American congressman, and the office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Earl Krugel and the extremist group’s leader, Irv Rubin, were charged in December 2001 with conspiring in the bomb plot. Rubin died a year later from injuries suffered in what authorities said was a jailhouse suicide attempt. According to the FBI, the JDL has been responsible for at least 40 terrorist acts in the United States since its inception in 1968.
The JDL is suspected in the 1985 murder of Alex Odeh, the Southern California Regional Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). Odeh was killed when a bomb exploded as he entered ADC‘s Santa Ana office The FBI investigation remains open, no arrests have been made, and there is currently a $1 million reward for information leading to conviction. For more information please see:
http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/seekinfo/odeh.htm
At Krugel‘s hearing, he revealed one name linked to the Odeh investigation that had not been previously known. The judge seriously admonished Krugel for withholding this information and for repeatedly failing polygraph tests.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Krugel‘s wife Lola said, “Earl did not deserve what he got, it was all political, it was all about Alex Odeh and my husband did not know anything about Alex Odeh.”