Last week’s explosion at the Palestinian Embassy in Prague continues to mystify. Czech police and Palestinian Authorities are calling Wednesday’s explosion that claimed the life of the Palestinian ambassador an accident, but the deceased’s daughter rejects the explanation.
Jamal al-Jamal was fatally injured in his head, chest and stomach when the safe he was opening exploded. It is unclear why the safe exploded, though “the possibilities include inexpert handling of an explosive device or its spontaneous detonation. The device was in a safe and was triggered after the door of the safe was opened. The police are not ruling out that the device was a part of the safe,” according to police spokeswoman Andrea Zoulova. al-Jamal’s wife was in the embassy at the time, but no one else was present as it was a holiday.
“There is nothing suggesting that a terrorist act was committed,” Zoulova told reporters after al-Jamal’s death on New Year’s Day. al-Jamal’s daughter, however, is not so sure. “The Palestinian official account is baseless,” the ambassador’s daughter, 30-year-old Rana al-Jamal, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Ramallah in the West Bank.
“The safe box has been in regular use — my mom (who lives there) told me that. The box was moved a day earlier and apparently something happened in the way.
“We, the family, believe it is a crime, and we need to find out what happened.”
The safe itself has been subject to conflicting reports. Initially, PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki reported that the safe had recently been moved to the location from the previous PLO headquarters, elsewhere in the city, but Palestinian Embassy spokesman Nabil el-Fahel told Czech radio that the safe was in constant use, as al-Jamal’s daughter claims.
Following the explosion, a stockpile of weapons, enough to arm 10 men, was discovered by Czech authorities at the Palestinian embassy. An unnamed Palestinian official told Reuters News Agency that the weapons had been retrieved from a Cold War-era sack and had been submitted to the Czech authorities for approval, but Czech sources denied the claim.
In the wake of the discovery, Czech officials are asking for the PA embassy to be relocated. “We asked the Czech foreign ministry for the embassy to be moved out of our district,” Petr Hejl, senior councilor of Prague’s Suchdol district, said.
“The district feels betrayed by the behavior of diplomats who kept weapons and explosives at the embassy, violating Czech and international law,” he told the AFP news agency.
