Abu Nidal

Abu Nidal (1937-2002), born Sabri al-Banna, was a Palestinian terrorist. He was the founder of the Fatah Revolutionary Council (also known as the Abu Nidal Organization), formed after a split between Nidal and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1974. The name "Abu Nidal" means "father of struggle" in Arabic.

Little is known for certain of his early life. He was born in Jaffa to a family of farmers and following the creation of Israel he grew up in Nablus. He became a school teacher before joining the Ba'ath[?] party and then PLO in 1967.

Abu Nidal and his organization planned and carried out attacks on behalf of several governments including those of Iraq, Libya and Syria. Operations attributed to the Abu Nidal Organization cover over twenty countries and 100 attacks, and include:

• the wounding of Israel's ambassador to Britain, Shlomo Argov[?], in June 1982, which triggered Israel's invasion of Lebanon;
• the hijacking of of an Egyptian aircraft at Malta in November 1985, resolved when Egyptian commandos stormed the plane slaying the four hijackers, with 60 of the 97 passengers also dying;
• the simultaneous attacks on the El Al ticket desks at Rome and Athens airports on December 27, 1985, which left 18 people dead and 120 injured;
• a botched hijacking in September 1986 at Karachi that left 22 people dead;
• a car bomb outside the Israeli embassy in Cyprus in 1988, which killed three people (and for which the organization claimed responsibility);
• the attack on the cruise ship City of Poros[?] on July 11, 1988, which killed nine people and wounded 98;

It has been claimed that internal purges of his group resulted in over 150 deaths.

On August 19, 2002 he was reported dead of gunshot wounds in his home in Baghdad. He was suffering from leukemia, and the Iraqi government has said he was also facing a charge of treason and was likely to be convicted. The cause of his death according to Iraq's foreign minister Tariq Aziz was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The London paper Al-Sharq al-Awsat states that there were in fact multiple gunshots and the death was a homicide carried out by Iraqi intelligence agents.

He was essentially mercenary in his activities. Although his ideology included the formation of a Palestinian state containing all of Israel, his targets included not only Israelis but also moderate Palestinians. He was commonly regarded as "the world's most dangerous terrorist" until the rise of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda movement.

The Fatah Revolutionary Council is not the same as the Palestinian organization Fatah.

Books

Abu Nidal, a Gun for Hire, by Patrick Seale: ISBN 0679400664

Other sources

BBC report on Abu Nidal's death: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2203004.stm