Lisbon — A terrorist group claimed responsibility Sunday for the death of a furniture and sporting goods manufacturer shot during a_ sporting goods fair in Lisbon.
In a statement left in a downtown garbage bin, the April 25 People’s Forces group said the shooting Saturday of industrialist Antonio Ferreira Souto, 48, was to avenge the death of a “revolutionary militant.”
The attack took place at the Nauticampo sporting goods fair, when about 10 armed men entered the fair and fired five shots at the manufacturer, who later died in hospital.
The FP25 have claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, bank robberies and shelling of NATO targets since 1980.
Vatican City — Pope John Paul II Wednesday met Japanese Buddhist Seiyu Kiriyama, who led 400 members of his Agon Shu sect to Rome to take part in an international youth rally with the Roman Catholic pontiff.
The brief meeting camé at the end of John Paul’s weekly general audience in the Pope Paul VI Audience Hall.
Kiriyama, dressed in a glittering gold and blue cape .and carrying an orange fan, is the spiritual leader of a half million Buddhists who belong to the sect he founded seven years ago. His delegation is among 200,000 young people expected to attend a rally Saturday outside the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
Vienna, Austria — Chezechoslovak authorities committed a Catholic peace activist to a mental hospital for protesting the deployment of Soviet missiles in his country, a Vienna based Catholic
press agency said Wednesday.
The Kathpress news agency said activist Jan Puliak was declared “mentally abnormal” by the authorities and sent to the psychiatric hospital after he was caught collecting signatures protesting the deployment of Soviet SS 20 missiles in Czechoslovakia.
Johannesburg, South Africa — President Pieter Botha, in an unprecedented address Wednesday to Parliament in Cape Town, condemned instigators of ‘‘arson, violence and death’ and vowed to enforce the law in riot torn South Africa.
Elsewhere in the nation, police Col. Gerrie van Rooyen said two officers and a guard opened fire on a crowd of about 2,000 blacks attacking a home in the black township of New Brighton, outside the southern coastal city of Port Elizabeth. Two men were killed.
And in Uitenhage near Port Elizabeth, Supreme Court Judge Donald Kannemeyer began an inquiry into last Thursday’s police slaying of at least 19 blacks who were marching to an outlawed funeral of blacks killed in earlier riots.
Peking — China and the Soviet Union will begin a sixth round of talks on improving their relations April 9 in Moscow, the Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday.
“The sixth round of SinoSoviet consultations will be held in Moscow April 9,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Yuzhen said in a one sentence announcement at a weekly press briefing.
The announcement coincided with a warming trend in Sino Soviet relations, coming only two weeks after the Chinese Communist Party signaled it seeks to mend a nearly 20year rift in ties with its Soviet counterpart.
Tel Aviv — Israel Sunday began large scale combined land, air, and sea maneuvers in northern Israel, military sources said.
The sources said the exercise involved regular and reserve units and was scheduled to continue through the week.
Israel’s northern command, which also is responsible for southern Lebanon where Israeli troops are now completing a 3stage pullback to the international border, is in charge of the maneuvers.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 5, 1985
