By TER Staff
Never-before-seen FBI documents obtained by The Enterprise Report reveal Jewish Defense League Chairman Irv Rubin, while jailed on federal terrorism charges in 2002, claimed he admitted his role in a plot to bomb a mosque and the office of a Congressman just before Rubin slit his throat and jumped from a 20-foot-high railing.
Rubin later died from his injuries.
"I am a bad Jew," Rubin allegedly told a fellow inmate, who also told FBI agents Rubin had befriended two Palestinian prisoners in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Downtown Los Angeles and had begun to reconsider his lifelong anger towards Arabs.
"Rubin told (name deleted) that what he did hurt the Jewish people and the Jewish cause," one inmate said.
One of the exclusively obtained FBI documents can be seen here:
The FBI reports, written by agents during the November, 2002 investigation into Rubin's death, may shed new light on Rubin's state of mind prior to his apparent suicide.
"During the past week, Rubin also confessed to (name deleted) that he attempted to blow up the mosque and the Congressman," one of the reports said.
Immediately following the three-story plunge, Rubin's widow, Shelley, said she was convinced Rubin had been murdered by another inmate.
His criminal defense attorney, however, said at the time Rubin had been despondent for months.
"He's been deteriorating for some time and the pressure of a Monday court appearance may have pushed him over the top," Mark Werksman said.
Rubin became head of the JDL in 1985.
The militant Jewish organization was founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was assassinated in New York City in 1990. Kahane's killer was later convicted of being a part of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.
The federal indictment against Rubin charged he and another JDL member, Earle Krugel, planned to build bombs and set them off at a mosque in Culver City, California and outside the offices of Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican who Rubin believed sympathized with the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah.
Rubin said the bombs were to be set off late at night to cause property damage only.
Rubin and Krugel, secretly recorded by a government informant, were charged with conspiracy, conspiracy to use a destructive device, attempted arson, attempted arson of a federal facility, possession of a destructive device, and solicitation to commit a crime of violence.
Both men faced a possible sentence of life in prison.
Krugel, who pleaded guilty after Rubin's death, was killed by an inmate at a Phoenix federal prison in 2005.
