Israel’s Police Leader Now Discounts Widespread Conspiracy to Kill Rabin : Assassination: Key Cabinet member says he accepts security service’s view that only confessed killer and brother planned the slaying.

Israel’s top cop on Wednesday backed off of his earlier assertion that slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was the victim of a conspiracy by a right-wing Jewish group, saying that he now accepts the view of the Israeli security service that the assassination was planned only by the 25-year-old gunman and his brother.

Internal Security Minister Moshe Shahal alleged that Palestinians, not Rabin, were the intended targets of Jewish radicals who associated with confessed assassin Yigal Amir and his brother, Hagai. Several radicals have been detained.

“I don’t think there was a conspiracy,” Shahal told reporters without explaining his change of opinion.

Several days after the Nov. 4 murder, when investigators found grenades, cases of explosives, timers and a pistol silencer at the Amir home, Shahal argued that the Amir brothers had been the ringleaders of a group that plotted over a two-year period to kill Rabin.

“He couldn’t have done it himself. He needed technical infrastructure and support from others,” said Shahal, whose title was then police minister.

As police rounded up several of Amir’s religious friends and classmates at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Shahal told reporters the conspirators also had meant to kill Cabinet ministers and other political figures.

Then-Interior Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview that the conspiracy was limited to “six people, maybe a dozen.” Barak has been promoted to the post of foreign minister in the new government of Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

The head of the General Security Service, or Shin Bet, reportedly has been insisting that the Amir brothers acted alone.

Speaking to reporters in a hallway of the Knesset on Wednesday, Shahal said the other so-called conspirators had planned “to harass or kill Palestinians, especially police officers,” but were not in on the Rabin assassination.

Besides the Amir brothers, three people remained in custody in connection with Rabin’s death: Yigal Amir’s friend from Bar Ilan University, Margalit Harshefi; his army buddy Dror Adani, and a soldier in an elite unit, Eric Schwartz.

Police said a sixth suspect arrested this week, Avshalom Weinberg, was accused of planning to attack Palestinian prisoners released under the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

Israel army radio said Wednesday that more arrests are expected of Amir’s cohorts for allegedly planning to attack Arabs. Police said the murder investigation is nearly completed.