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Notorious Palestinian terrorist reported dead
©Los Angeles Times JERUSALEM -- If terror mastermind Abu Nidal indeed is dead, how did he die? The 65-year-old Palestinian, one of the Middle East's most notorious killers of Jews, Israelis, Westerners and other Arabs, reportedly was found dead in a Baghdad, Iraq, apartment over the weekend. Some people said it was suicide. But reports said he had multiple bullet wounds. He had been ill. He was hated by many. The purported demise of Abu Nidal was announced in a two-paragraph item at the top of the front page of Monday's Al Ayyam newspaper, published in the West Bank and circulated in Jerusalem. Al Ayyam is edited by a confidant of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, one of countless enemies who would like to see Abu Nidal dead. Senior officials of Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, especially those who advocated negotiating with Israel, were among Abu Nidal's many victims through the years. Palestinian officials confirmed Abu Nidal's death to reporters at Arafat's headquarters. But his family, including a brother in the West Bank city of Nablus, expressed doubts. And a deputy in Damascus, Syria, denied the report. Abu Nidal, which means "Father of the struggle," is the nom de guerre of Sabri Al-Bana, born in May 1937 in Jaffa in what was then British-ruled Palestine. He was the son of a wealthy merchant. The family had an 18-room mansion and 6,000 acres of orchards and orange groves. When the Arab-Israeli war broke out in 1948 and ended with the creation of Israel, the Al-Banas joined the mass flight of Palestinians to nearby Jordan. The Al-Banas spent nearly a year in a refugee camp -- dumped from great wealth to abject poverty, an experience that branded Abu Nidal with a bitterness that would remain with him for life. He wanted nothing less than the obliteration of Israel, with all its land restored to the Palestinians. Anyone willing to settle for less, as Arafat eventually did, was his enemy. He studied engineering in Cairo, didn't graduate and wound up a schoolteacher. His first born son was named Nidal, the Arabic word for "struggle," and following Arab tradition, Al-Bana took the name Abu Nidal, or "Father of Nidal." Once regarded by the U.S. government as the most dangerous terrorist group in existence, Abu Nidal's organization had been much less active in recent years. His death, if confirmed, was not expected to change today's violence in the region or the state of international terrorism. But it would represent a symbolic closing of one of the bloodiest chapters in the history of the Middle East. "The world would certainly be a better place without people like Abu Nidal," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said in Washington. Abu Nidal was the Osama bin Laden of his day, a ruthless killer whose name became synonymous with terrorism. A master of disguises and illicit finance, he was a mysterious figure whose whereabouts and activities have been the stuff of rumors. He broke with Arafat's PLO in 1974 because it wasn't radical enough. Initially, he was based in Iraq and worked with intelligence officials in attacking Iraq's Syrian rivals. At the same time, he was building his own Fatah-Revolutionary Council. Never one to let loyalty get in the way, Abu Nidal switched sides in 1983 and worked under Syrian auspices to strike out at Arab states attempting rapprochement with Israel. Abu Nidal commandos attacked synagogues in Europe, hijacked or bombed international airliners, shot up restaurants and hotels and assassinated diplomats the world over. Hundreds of people were killed or wounded in attacks in 20 countries throughout the 1970s and into the early 1990s. Two days after Christmas in 1985, in his most infamous assault, Abu Nidal deployed suicide squads armed with machine guns and grenades to the airports of Rome and Vienna. Simultaneously, they strafed the ticket counters of Israel's El Al airlines, killing 20 people, including five Americans. "Abu Nidal was the "ultimate terrorist': cruel, uninhibited, efficient and devoid of ideology," Yossi Melman, a commentator for the Israeli Haaretz newspaper and author of a book on Abu Nidal, said Monday. "In the 1970s and 1980s, he was considered something of a bin Laden, a man of terror who had his hand in everything." Melman described Abu Nidal as a "terror contractor" who served many masters. He worked for the Iraqis against Syria, the Syrians against Jordan, and the Libyans against a variety of opponents, Melman said. In return for his services, he received money, intelligence, logistical assistance and cover. While it is thought that he never attacked inside Israel, Abu Nidal was responsible for the 1982 attempted assassination of an Israeli ambassador in London, Shlomo Argov. That incident provided Israel's defense minister at the time, current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a reason for invading Lebanon to oust Arafat's PLO from its capital, Beirut. Over the years, Abu Nidal also killed key officials in the PLO, including several of Arafat's closest associates. The Palestinians sentenced him to death in absentia for what was reported to have been an attempt to assassinate Arafat. When the Abu Nidal organization expanded to close to 500 members, it was plagued by internecine battles and almost imploded during a bloody purge in Algeria in the late 1980s when it all but disappeared and ceased activities. At the same time, the group shunned and was shunned by newer, Islamic-based extremist organizations, such as al-Qaida. U.S. officials said they believed Abu Nidal had moved to Iraq in 1999, receiving sanctuary from Saddam Hussein after being booted from Egypt and Libya. A chain-smoker, Abu Nidal had been rumored to have cancer or leukemia. Azzam Ahmad, the former Palestinian ambassador to Iraq, said in an interview that Abu Nidal had undergone at least two major heart surgeries. Speculation was abundant on how and why Abu Nidal died. Several Palestinian reports, including the Al Ayyam story, suggested he had committed suicide -- but didn't explain how he could have shot himself more than once. They suggested he was despondent over his illness. Other theories suggested he was killed by a Palestinian rival settling old scores, or by his Iraqi hosts. Hussein is said to be attempting to stave off a U.S. attack and could have decided that Abu Nidal was too much of a liability. David Kimchi, a former Israeli intelligence and Foreign Ministry official, told Israeli radio that Abu Nidal "was completely on his own." "He had a very small group of fanatics who worked with him and they were very active, but he was never part of the group with Habash, Hawatme and all the rest," Kimchi said, naming leaders of other radical groups. "They all regarded him as a bit of an oddity, both because of the way he behaved and because of the way he regarded the rest of the Palestinian movements." -- Information from the Washington Post, New York Times and Associated Press was used in this report.
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