Palestinian terror leader found dead
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See the article in its original context from August 2002.
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Ramallah, West Bank (AP) - Abu Nidal, the Palestinian renegade whose name became a byword for international terrorism, was found dead in his Baghdad apartment with multiple gunshot wounds, Palestinian officials said Monday.
Abu Nidal's body was found three days ago, said two senior Palestinian officials in Ramallah who spoke on condition of anonymity. They said the reports they received from Baghdad suggested Abu Nidal had committed suicide but did not explain how that was possible when there was more than one bullet wound.
Word of his death came from his rivals - in the mid-1970s, Abu Nidal accused Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization of softening in the struggle against Israel and made the PLO his prime target. His gunmen picked off Arafat's most trusted lieutenants.
The death was reported Monday in the Palestinian daily Al Ayyam. In Baghdad, the deputy Palestinian ambassador, Nejah Abdul-Rahman, said he had no information regarding what he described as rumors of.
Abu Nidal's death. Abu Nidal spokesman Ghanem Saleh, speaking in Lebanon, said he had only heard the report from news media and had no immediate comment.
Abu Nidal, whose real name is Sabri al-Banna, has been one of the key figure in Middle East terror for the past quarter century and has often changed sides. But Monday, an Israeli analyst said he had been sidelined in the last few years.
"In the last few years he lived in Baghdad with his
men, it could possible have been a one-manshow," said Ephraim Inbar, an expert on terrorism at the Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry refused comment, saying it was an internal Palestinian matter.
Abu Nidal - a nom de guerre that means "father of the struggle" - was born in Jaffa in 1937 when the area was part of British-governed Palestine. The family later moved to Nablus, and he left the area to organize opposition to the
establishment of Israel.
The shadowy guerrilla masterminded the killings of both Jews and fellow Palestinians who opposed him. He flitted from one lair to another to avoid capture and switched backers from Iraq to Syria to Libya over the years. He is reported to run an international extortion racket running into millions of dollars, shaking down governments with threats of attacks. He has been accused of dealing in arms and of being a hit man for his various Arab backers.
The chain-smoking schoolteacher-turned-terrorist has struck targets from Paris to Pakistan. His followers bombed American airliners, mowed down travelers in airports, machine-gunned sidewalk cafes and synagogues and blew up hotels. His most famous - but not most fatal - attacks were twin assaults on the Israeli airline El Al's ticket counters at Rome and Vienna airports on 27 December 1985. Eighteen people were killed and 120 wounded.
OBSERVE
CAN:BASE
These views from undated videos showing Osama bin Laden waving and left, being guarded by a detail of bodyguards, is part of a cache of videotapes that CNN acquired in Afghanistan which purport to show al-Qaida terror training, bomb-making and testing poison gas experiments in which dogs die agonizing deaths. Photos: AP
