The Mitered Gunrunner

By almost any standard there was something suspicious about Ilarion Capucci. Driving his black Mercedes-Benz, he crossed from Israel into Jordan and Lebanon at least 50 times in the past year. Last April he claimed that more than $750,000 in cash was stolen from his Jerusalem residence. When police investigated the theft, Capucci insisted that the money had been returned, and asked them to drop the matter. His behavior seemed particularly strange because he is an archbishop of the Melchite Catholic Church (which is autonomous from but in union with Roman Catholicism, and recognizes the Pope as premier patriarch) and vicar of the 5,000 Arabic-speaking Melchites living in and around Jerusalem.

Israeli security officers finally moved this month against the 52-year-old, Syrian-born archbishop, who had changed his name to the Italianate Capucci from his family's Turkish name, Kapugi. As he re-entered Jerusalem from one of his trips into Lebanon, agents found stashed away under the seats, in the trunk and inside the doors of his car dozens of pounds of explosives, detonators, four Soviet-made automatic rifles, two pistols, bullets and grenades.

Israeli officials released Capucci, hoping to avoid a diplomatic incident that could damage relations with Christian communities. But continued investigation led the police to conclude that the prelate, an outspoken advocate of the Palestinian cause, was an important liaison between the Fatah command in Beirut and its terrorists inside Israel.

Last week the archbishop was rearrested on suspicion of smuggling weapons to terrorists. A search of his villa revealed additional caches of weapons and ammunition, leading an Israeli officer to exclaim: "Capucci is the biggest supplier of arms and ammunition to terrorist organizations on the West Bank since the 1967 war." He is suspected of having been linked directly to several recent terrorist activities, including the aiming of North Korean-made Katyusha rockets at the area of the city where U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stayed during his May visit to Israel; the rockets were discovered before a timing device could activate them. The case is highly sensitive because of the interest taken in it by the Vatican and the Beirut-based Melchite Patriarch Maximos V Hakim. Israel's top leaders themselves will probably have to decide what to do with Capucci: deportation, or trial and likely imprisonment.

Involvement in the Arab-Israeli dispute by a cleric is far from unique. Priests of the Armenian Church have worked as agents for both the Israelis and the Arabs; Russian Orthodox clergymen in the Middle East have served as spies for the Soviet Union; even Franciscan monks have been suspected of engaging in intelligence activities for the Arabs. The ease with which clerics can travel across national frontiers makes them especially valuable as operatives. They are often motivated by an intellectual commitment to the cause they serve--and sometimes, alas, by the enormous sums of money they can make. Israeli officials, for example, believe that Capucci received more than $10,000 each time he carried messages or weapons between Arab countries and Israel.

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