JDL Activist Denies a Role in Odeh Death, Raps Wife’s Jailing

A militant Jewish activist living in Israel denies involvement in the 1985 killing of Arab-American leader Alex Odeh, said a public defender who represents his wife in Los Angeles today.

The activist says federal agents arrested his wife in Los Angeles this week for a 1980 bombing so they can lure him back into the country to charge him with the Odeh death and three other bombings, his attorneys said.

Robert Manning, 36, an active member of the Jewish Defense League who emigrated from the United States to Israel in 1981, is the target of FBI investigations into four 1985 bombings, including one that killed the Arab-American leader as he entered his Santa Ana office, said New York attorney Samuel A. Abady.

A federal magistrate ordered today that Manning’s wife, Rochelle, be held without bail for allegedly mailing a bomb that killed a secretary at a Manhattan Beach computer company in 1980. She was arrested Wednesday at Los Angeles International Airport as she arrived from Israel to visit her family.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Nancy Stock disclosed at the bail hearing that Robert Manning wrote a letter dated Feb. 21, 1987, to the American Civil Liberties Union in New York saying he was a suspect in four bombings. The letter was not made public in court, but Deputy Federal Public Defender John Martin, who represents Rochelle Manning, said that in the letter, Robert Manning denies involvement in the Odeh killing.