Poland suspended a general and detained two more security officers in its continuing investigation of the kidnapping of a priest, the Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko. An autopsy confirmed that the priest had been murdered. His body was brought to his parish church where funeral services are to be held today. The Government announced today that two more Interior Ministry security officers had been ordered detained and a general suspended in connection with the abduction and slaying of a pro-Solidarity priest. At the same time, a Government spokesman said in an interview that an autopsy on the priest, the Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko, 37 years old, had confirmed that he had been murdered. The spokesman, Jerzy Urban, said that as a result of the autopsy, he expected that homicide charges would be filed within a day or so against the three Interior Ministry officers originally seized for the crime. The priest was abducted from his car in northern Poland on October 19.
Later, on a nightly television news program, Mr. Urban said attempts by some Solidarity sympathizers to create civil rights committees to monitor the police were without legal foundation. He said a dissident group called KOR, which he said was behind the move, would not be permitted “to resurrect itself over the dead body of Father Popiełuszko.” Mr. Urban spoke as the body of the priest was brought to his parish church here, where he is to be buried on Saturday.
The Polish Government spokesman said in the interview that discussions were continuing between the Government and church representatives about which Government officials, if any, would attend the requiem mass and funeral at St. Stanislaw Kostka, the parish church where Father Popiełuszko preached his monthly sermons in defense of jailed Solidarity activists and their cause. He confirmed that the Government wanted to send representatives.
As the white coffin containing Father Popiełuszko’s body was brought to the church this evening from Bialystok, where the autopsy was performed, a crowd of thousands of emotional mourners pressed toward it. Originally, church officials had planned to have the burial take place at a cemetery several miles from the church. But just after midnight on Thursday Jozef Cardinal Glemp, the Primate of Poland, sent a message to the parish church saying that in response to petitions from friends and parishioners he was authorizing the burial at the church.
The Italian authorities decided today to send a key Mafia informer to the United States to face drug-related charges, the ANSA news agency reported. It said the jailed crime boss, Tommaso Buscetta, might also cooperate with the investigation of Mafia connections with organized crime in the United States. The report said the extradition request had been filed with the Italian authorities soon after Mr. Buscetta was sent to Italy from Brazil in July. It said he was expected to leave for the United States early next week.
Stalin’s daughter returned home to the Soviet Union, 17 years after she defected to the West. The Soviet Government announced that citizenship had been restored to Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s only surviving child, at her request. She had lived in the United States and in England. A brief announcement in the Government newspaper Izvestia and on Tass, the official press agency, and read on the evening television news said the Soviet authorities “considered and complied with a request made by S. I. Alliluyeva, who has returned to Moscow, for restoring her to the citizenship of the U.S.S.R. as well as for granting Soviet citizenship to Alliluyeva’s daughter Olga.” Miss Alliluyeva’s return left some Western acquaintances stunned and puzzled, but others who have been close to her expressed no surprise, saying she had been unhappy in the West in recent years.
A Senate Foreign Relations Committee minority staff report completed today criticizes State Department officials in Washington for “deficiencies that may have contributed” to the bombing of the United States Embassy in Lebanon in September. The report points out that the person immediately reponsible for security at the new embassy building in East Beirut was a junior-level security officer whose previous work had been as an investigator and bodyguard. The man “was sent to Beirut without taking the department’s 10-week training course” for security officers.
Hojatolislam Ali Khamenei, the President of Iran, marked the fifth anniversary of the student seizure of the United States Embassy two days early today by saying that Iran would not hesitate to strike against United States interests anywhere. “As long as the U.S. conspires against this nation and against the Islamic republic, we consider it is our right to retaliate and to hit against U.S. interests anywhere in the world,” he declared. Devoting much of his sermon at a weekly prayer rally to the takeover by Islamic militants on November 4, 1979, Hojatolislam Khamenei said the United States would have to change its policies before relations could be restored. The former embassy is now a headquarters for Revolutionary Guards, and the Swiss Embassy looks after American interests.
Violence ignited by the assassination of Indira Gandhi spread Friday, pushing the nationwide death toll close to 1,000, according to some estimates. At least 500 killings were reported in the New Delhi area alone. As this battered and fearful city prepared to receive more than 100 foreign dignitaries at Mrs. Gandhi’s funeral and cremation today, her son and successor, Rajiv, was officially confirmed as Prime Minister on Friday. Applauded by Party Members To thunderous applause, members of Parliament from the governing Congress Party ratified his appointment by a party central committee. He was appointed Wednesday only hours after his mother was gunned down by assailants who have been identified by the police as two Sikh members of her security guard.
On the eve of the funeral of Indira Gandhi, trains have been arriving at Delhi Railway Station from the countryside carrying the battered bodies of slain Sikhs. The deputy stationmaster at Delhi Railway Station said he had been told by witnesses that some of the Sikhs had been killed by gangs that boarded the trains. Other victims, he said, were apparently killed or wounded first, then thrown onto passing coaches. Since Thursday, when violence against Sikhs became widespread after Mrs. Gandhi’s assassins were identified by officials as Sikhs in her security detail, at least 40 bodies have arrived, station officials said.
A major two-week-old effort by Salvadoran Army units to drive leftist rebels from their strongholds north of this garrison town in Morazan Province appears to be winding down with few decisive gains for the army. Salvadoran and other Western military officials said in interviews that the sweep by 2,300 army troops had disrupted guerrilla operations, forcing the rebels to break up into small units and abandon their base camps and training schools in the mountain valleys beyond the Torola River. But the operation also cost the life of the army’s best combat commander, Lieut. Col. Domingo Monterrosa, as well as three other experienced officers, who died when their helicopter crashed deep in guerrilla territory, possibly brought down by rebel machine-gunners. Plans to station army units in the area permanently appear to have stalled in the face of continuing rebel ability to harass army patrols and mass suddenly for large-scale attacks that have destroyed army units in the past.
The State Department, concerned about a potential resurgence of right-wing violence in El Salvador, has temporarily banned all but essential travel to that country by American officials, Reagan Administration aides said today. The ban, which went into effect without public notice three weeks ago, covers executive branch officials. Members of Congress and their aides, although not officially restricted, have been urged by State Department officials to cancel or postpone visits to El Salvador until next year. Two Congressional aides said they were told by the State Department this week that visits to El Salvador later this month would be unwise because of security problems. The aides said they had canceled their visits.
Four Chilean riot policemen were killed and 12 wounded today when a bomb destroyed their bus in the most serious of recent bombings directed at the Government of President Augusto Pinochet, police said. The remote-controlled bomb, which had been planted in a wall on a main road, sprayed the inside of the bus with glass and metal fragments, the police said. No one on the bus escaped injury.
As a major airlift began yesterday to send food to the drought-stricken northern regions of Ethiopia, a consortium of four relief agencies said they had developed a plan to distribute 200,000 tons of food in the East African nation over the next year. Separately, the head of the Agency for International Development announced that the United States had signed its first direct agreement with the Ethiopian Government to send an additional 50,000 tons of food, worth $12 million, to the country, where it is feared that more than 6 million people may face starvation. Previously, the Administration has sent food only through private relief organizations, saying it feared that the Marxist Government of Ethiopia would not deliver the food to areas held by rebel factions. Some Democrats have charged the Reagan Administration has not provided sufficient relief.
Angola has offered to cut the number of Cuban troops in its country from 30,000 to 10,000 and to redeploy those remaining far from its southern borders if South Africa will grant independence to South-West Africa, Reagan Administration officials reported today. This falls short of the South African demand that all Cuban troops be withdrawn as part of an overall settlement designed to create an independent nation of Namibia, under United Nations auspices, out of the disputed territory of South-West Africa. But Administration officials, who have been involved in intensive mediation between Angola and South Africa, said they regarded the Angolan offer as important because it marked the first time Angola had accepted the principle that Cuban troops, who have been in Angola since 1975, would be part of an overall package agreement. Negotiator’s Comment Chester A. Crocker, the Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs, who has been the principal American negotiator, refused to comment on the details of the Angolan offer. But he said later that this account is “misleading” and does not represent the position of the Angolan Government.
France performs a nuclear test at Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
A special arms control envoy may be appointed by President Reagan if he is re-elected, senior Administration officials said. The envoy would try to end negotiating deadlocks with the Soviet Union, they said. They said that Mr. Reagan had neither made a final decision nor addressed the precise powers and duties of the position. In any event, they said officials were questioning whether the sharp differences within the Administration and with Moscow would take more than a “czar” to surmount. At present, arms talks are conducted by formal negotiatiators operating under strict instructions worked out by institutional agreements between the State Department and the Pentagon and approved by the President.
President Reagan attends Reagan-Bush ’84 rallies in Saginaw, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio. President Reagan campaigned across the industrial Middle West today, as ebullient as he was relentless in his message that the nation had become “a giant on the scene” through his stewardship. Mr. Reagan altered only his anecdotes in hewing to an applause-proven stump speech that satisfied partisan rallies in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois. The crowds responded approvingly as he took credit for strengthening the nation’s economy and its military forces. “The United States of America was never meant to be a second-best nation,” he told crowds that huddled happily in the autumnal chill and rhythmically chanted his name. President Reagan is an overnight guest tonight at the Excelsior Hotel, Little Rock, Arkansas.
As the Presidential campaign nears a climax, Walter F. Mondale and Geraldine A. Ferraro are battling hard to cut into Mr. Reagan’s popularity in the West and are predicting victory, or at least a strong showing, in California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii. But as the election approaches there are indications that, if anything, Mr. Reagan’s lead is widening in the region where he began his political career and where the brand of political conservatism that now dominates the Republican Party first took root. Along with the South, the West is still regarded as the President’s most solid base. The latest California Poll, conducted by Mervin D. Field and made public Wednesday, gives Mr. Reagan and Vice President Bush a lead of 16 percentage points over the Democratic contenders, 6 points higher than when Mr. Mondale and his running mate, Geraldine A. Ferraro, began an intensified campaign in the West three weeks ago.
A national survey of newspapers has found that 58 percent endorsed President Reagan, 9 percent backed Walter F. Mondale and 33 percent made no endorsements. Editor & Publisher, the journalism trade magazine, said Thursday in releasing the poll that 660 of the nation’s 1,701 daily newspapers had responded.
Chanting “Four more days,” tens of thousands of people welcomed Walter F. Mondale to Boston today and heard the Democratic nominee attack President Reagan’s foreign and domestic policies as dangerous and without “caring or compassion.” After a big rally Thursday in New York’s garment district, Mr. Mondale drew another large, ebullient crowd today, a mixed group of the young and the middle-aged who packed the Boston Common at lunch hour and responded with a roar when Mr. Mondale said, “There’s a smell of victory in the air.” Virtually all the state’s Democratic leaders were at the rally, including its two Senators, Edward M. Kennedy and Paul E. Tsongas; the Speaker of the House, Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., and Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.
Geraldine Ferraro urged women to vote for the Democratic Presidential ticket in a campaign speech in Van Nuys, California. Etching a portrait of herself as an exemplar of what American women can achieve, Geraldine A. Ferraro today made an emotional appeal to women to vote for the Democratic Presidential ticket. The Vice-Presidential nominee, choosing to address women specifically in the closing days of her campaign, said that new freedoms and choices won by women would be severely curtailed in a second Reagan Administration. “We’ve chosen the path to equality, please don’t let them turn us around,” she pleaded in a speech here to an audience of several thousand, many of them women.
The jobless rate stayed at 7.3 percent in October, the Labor Department reported in releasing the last major economic statistic before Election Day. That level, which has prevailed since May, is a tenth of a percentage point below the 7.4 percent of January 1981, when President Reagan was inaugurated.
Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962. After Barfield’s appeal was denied in federal court, she instructed her attorneys to abandon a further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Barfield was executed by lethal injection at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. She released a statement before the execution: “I know that everybody has gone through a lot of pain, all the families connected, and I am sorry, and I want to thank everybody who have been supporting me all these six Barfield chose as her last meal Cheez Doodles and Coca-Cola. Barfield was buried in a small, rural North Carolina cemetery near her first husband, Thomas Burke.
Many nonsmokers die of lung cancer caused by tobacco fumes, according to an Environmental Protection Agency study that estimates that the number of such deaths ranges from 500 to 5,000 a year. The study says the “passive” smoke inhaled by nonsmokers is the country’s most dangerous airborne carcinogen. The study says that “passive” tobacco smoke is the country’s most dangerous airborne carcinogen, even if the lower figure of 500 deaths is used. Coke oven emissions, the No. 2 carcinogenic pollutant, are said to cause up to 150 lung cancer deaths a year. The agency is involved in the investigation of the question because it determines the health hazards caused by air pollutants.
The Defense Department said Thursday it was pressing its program to turn 600 military facilities into shelters for the homeless, and the Department of Health and Human Services urged an advocate for the indigent who is protesting Administration policies to end his 49-day hunger strike. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said Thursday that he was putting the program under the direction of the Pentagon’s civilian manpower and logistics chief, Assistant Secretary Lawrence J. Korb. At the same time, an internal Pentagon memorandum indicated that the Pentagon’s “Shelters for the Homeless Program” had begun to gather impetus, with another five areas asking for Defense Department facilities. Those asking for the facilities were Ogden, Utah; Denver; Boston; San Diego and Orange County, California.
A Miami man named as a central figure in an alleged plot to overthrow the Government of Honduras was already under investigation in a drug-smuggling case, according to affidavits made public today. The suspect, Faiz J. Sikaffy, a Honduran national living in Miami, was linked by the Federal drug-enforcement officials to the smuggling of cocaine and marijuana into Florida and Louisiana before his arrest Thursday on charges of conspiring to assassinate President Roberto Suazo Cordova of Honduras. Mr. Sikaffy, 48 years old, who has imported agricultural goods and operated fishing boats since he left Honduras two years ago, was one of eight people arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in connection with the alleged plot against Dr. Suazo Cordova.
A former sergeant in the New Orleans police and his sister were found guilty today in the theft of $6.4 million from a Wells Fargo terminal in Memphis, Tennessee last Thanksgiving Day. A Federal jury deliberated about 90 minutes before convicting the two, James Broussard, 41 years old, and Marie (Sue) Reitmeyer, 37, on charges of robbery, conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen cash. Each faces a maximum of 35 years in prison. Two others, Nathan Gervais and his estranged wife, Marilyn Gervais, had pleaded guilty in the case and testified against the pair convicted today. Prosecutors said it was the nation’s third largest robbery.
Two girls who disappeared while trick-or-treating Halloween night were found slain today in an abandoned building near their home, the police said, and a third girl who went with them was found unharmed, hiding in a closet. Police Chief Patrick Vaughan said officials believed the two had been strangled. The dead girls were Sherry Gordon, 12 years old, and her cousin, Theresa Hall, 10. The survivor, Patricia Hall, 7, Theresa’s sister, was in good condition, physically unharmed, said Bill Homoky, a spokesman at Decatur Memorial Hospital. Two maintenance workers at the abandoned building found the dead girls in separate second-floor bedrooms of an apartment at the Longview Place Housing Development, less than two blocks from their home.
A suburban couple headed for a poor housing project today, the first of 10 members of a group moving in to get the police to crack down on drug dealers there. G. Allen and Sandy Swartz are the first to move to the Camden Street housing project in the predominantly black Roxbury neighborhood. “Why shouldn’t I do that if I’m concerned about the problems my neighbors have?” Mr. Swartz said. Mr. Swartz, a white who sells insurance, belongs to a neighborhood crime-fighting group called Drop-a-Dime, Report Crime. Mrs. Swartz is not a member but decided to join her husband. The 10 are to identify and report drug dealers to the police and counsel children on the dangers of drugs.
Heavy seas and strong winds from an approaching storm battered the crippled tanker Puerto Rican today as it drifted without anyone aboard 25 miles off the coast near San Francisco.
Three men have been convicted in Brooklyn of running a nationwide counterfeit credit-card scheme that Federal authorities said accounted for losses of $50 million.
NBC said yesterday that it was not interested in televising United States Football League games for the 1986 season, when the league plans to move from a spring to a fall schedule. The network confirmed its position in response to an article in The Washington Post that said both NBC and ABC had informed the league of their lack of interest in broadcasting games that year, the final season of the National Football League’s contract with the three major networks.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1216.65 (-0.44)
Born:
Brett Goode, NFL long snapper (NFL Champions, Super Bowl 45-Packers, 2010; Green Bay Packers), in Pampa, Texas.
Tommy Layne, MLB pitcher (San Diego Padres, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees), in St. Louis, Missouri.
Tim Ramholt, Swiss NHL defenseman (Calgary Flames), in Zurich, Switzerland.
Tamara Hope [Lindeman], Canadian actress (“The Sandy Bottom Orchestra”; “Guinevere Jones”), and singer-songwriter (The Weather Station), in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Julia Stegner, German supermodel, in Munich, Germany.
Died:
Margie Velma Barfield, 52, U.S. murderer, first woman to be executed in 22 years.
History Diaries 