Jailhouse suicide?

last updated 8 January 2015

Los Angeles

Irv Rubin, the Jewish Defense League leader accused of plotting to bomb a Southern California mosque, was declared brain dead this week after an apparent suicide attempt. Rubin reportedly slit his own throat and jumped from a detention-center balcony, falling 18 feet onto a concrete floor. He was awaiting trial on charges that he and another man plotted to bomb the King Fahd mosque in Culver City as well as the office of an Arab-American congressman. A lawyer for Rubin’s co-defendant said he had been a “mental wreck” since his December arrest, but Rubin’s wife said he must have been attacked. “My husband would never kill himself,” Shelley Rubin said. “This was a hit.”