Word: nidal
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Exquisitely rare is the news item that can induce a satisfied smile in both Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat. But both men have reason to cheer the passing of Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist mastermind who, depending on who you believe, either killed himself or was shot dead this week in Baghdad. That's because in a 20-year career that began in 1974, Nidal's organization killed or wounded some 900 people in 20 different countries, making enemies both Arab and Israeli. Most of his victims were Israeli and European civilians, killed in an encyclopedia of terroristic manners: massacred...
...Baghdad residence raised more questions than it answered. Did the 65-year-old Palestinian born Sabri al-Banna die by his own hand - as the Iraqis say - or was he killed, as his Fatah Revolutionary Council organization claims? For whom was he working while in Baghdad? (Abu Nidal may have proclaimed himself a champion of the Palestinian cause, but he spent most of his career freelancing for various Arab and even possibly some Eastern European intelligence agencies. Unlike, the Osama bin Laden generation of Islamist terrorists, Abu Nidal always needed the patronage of a state...
...Answers to the mysteries of Abu Nidal's employer, job description and demise are unlikely to be forthcoming. His quarter-century of clandestine operations involved plenty of double-dealing and no paper trail. Verifying tales of Nidal's comings and goings is a fact-checker's nightmare, and this week's news was hardly the first time tales of Nidal's demise had filled headlines. Thirteen years ago he was reportedly at death's door, riddled with cancer in a Libyan hospital. Eight years later, he was still at death's door, this time reportedly in an Egyptian hospital, under...
...Nidal was a relic of a bygone era in which terrorists were wholly dependent on the sanctuary and succor of states - and therefore acted primarily as proxies of their patron at the time. Like the PFLP-trained Venezuelan Carlos the Jackal, the Japanese Red Army and Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang, Abu Nidal embarked on a career of mercenary mass murder in the early 1970s, eventually counting among his clients Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran and possibly others, and generally collecting between $1 million and $3 million per operation. And as the others fell by the wayside, he became...
...made, so it can be eliminated." MIDDLE EAST In the Wrong Place, at the Wrong Time The death of a Palestinian man revived criticism that the Israeli army is using human shields as part of its campaign in the West Bank. Palestinian witnesses said 19-year-old Nidal Abu M'khisan was forced at gunpoint to try to get Nasser Jarrar - a senior Hamas militant in the West Bank town of Tubas - to surrender. M'khisan was given a flak jacket and sent to Jarrar's door, where he was killed in a burst of gunfire. The army said...