San Juan, Puerto Rico — The FBI Saturday confirmed the arrests on immigration charges of two Indians and a West German who reportedly are being investigated for links to an assassination plot against Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
FBI agent Luis Monserrate said the bureau was advised of the arrests by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, but that he had no more information as the matter was under INS jurisdiction.
Efforts to contact INS officials Saturday in San Juan and Washington were unsuccessful.
A San Juan newspaper, El Vocero, identified the men as Gurnam Singh, Ashok Kumar and Wolfgang Mergell. It said all three were arrested for trying to enter the United States illegally and were being investigated in connection with the alleged plot to murder Gandhi during his U.S. visit.
The El Vocero newspaper said the three were detained in San Juan Thursday after arriving on an Iberia flight from Spain.
Officials said they apparently hoped to use the U.S. commonwealth as a springboard into the United States.
The newspaper said the two Indians, one of whom claimed not to speak English, had passports with a stamp from the U.S. Embassy in Brussels barring them from entering American territory.
The German was said to be carrying a passport made out to his brother, Ernst Gunther Mergell, and to have reported his home address as Dallas.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 14, 1985
