15 May Organization
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The 15 May Organization or Abu Ibrahim Faction was a minor breakout faction from Wadie Haddad's ultraradical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - External Operations (PFLP-EO).
The 15 May was founded after the death of Haddad in 1978, and was led by Muhammad al-Umari (kunya, Abu Ibrahim). It was never part of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The group took credit for several bombings of international targets in the early 1980s, including hotels[1] and airliners, but is believed to have disbanded soon after, when members joined Fatah radical Col. Hawari's Fatah Special Operations Group.[2] The 15 May Organization is believed to have been sponsored by Iraq[3], and founder Abu Ibrahim was believed by US authorities to have relocated there after the group disbanded.
The title of the group is almost certainly drawn from 15 May 1948, the day that the British Mandate over Palestine ended and the first Arab-Israeli War began, also commemorated among Palestinians and Arab Israelis as Nakba (Catastrophe) Day.
On August 31, 1982, Adnan Awad, the owner of a lucrative Iraqi construction company who had been pressured by Ibrahim into service, defected from the 15 May Organization and turned himself over to the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia. He was turned over to the Swiss, but later returned to the United States to help secure indictment against the 15 May leadership. With his aid, American intelligence agencies determined that it was the 15 May Organization that had constructed the bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 830.[1]
- ^ Michelle Visser, Sovereign Immunity and Informant Defectors: The United States' Refusal to Protect its Protectors, 58 Stan. L. Rev. 663 (2005)
