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The newspaper could have been the target in its own right. One of the most prestigious and respected papers in the Middle East, Al Hayat runs balanced, unsparing coverage on political developments in virtually every Arab country outside Saudi Arabia, and it has won a wide audience throughout the region, as well as among Arab exiles in Europe and the U.S. But these qualities have also earned Al Hayat many enemies in a part of the world with virtually no tradition of--or appreciation for--objective journalism. Under the editorship of Jihad al Khazen, the paper, based in London, has undertaken hard-hitting stories about the civil war in Algeria, corruption in Jordan, internecine butchery in Iraq and the sort of radical Islamic extremism in Egypt that produced Salameh and other followers of Sheik Rahman.

Nevertheless, Khazen is mystified. He acknowledges that Al Hayat's editorials have consistently opposed "terrorism and extremism in the Arab world." But he points out that the newspaper has also been willing to publish interviews with numerous Islamic militant leaders to give these groups a chance to air their views. "We have been thinking hard and fast," he says. "I really did not pick a fight with anyone. I was very surprised that we received those letter bombs. We must have hit a nerve, but we don't know whose." (One possibility: an extremist group whose views Khazen refused to publish.) Regardless, the injured party seems to feel that the insults spelled death. Which makes for some irony. In Arabic, the name Al Hayat means life.

--Reported by James L. Graff/Chicago, Scott MacLeod/Paris and Ann M. Simmons/Washington