| Imad Mughniyah عماد مغنية |
|
|---|---|
| Imad Mughniyah | |
| Hezbollah Head of Security | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | December 7, 1962 Lebanon |
| Died | February 12, 2008 (aged 45) Damascus, Syria |
| Nationality | Lebanese |
| Political party | Hezbollah |
| Religion | Muslim - Shi'a |
Imad Fayez Mughniyah (December 7, 1962 - February 12, 2008), also transliterated Mughniyya, Mughniyeh, Mogniyah, (Arabic: عماد فايز مغنية), alias al-Hajj Radwan (الحاج رضوان), was a senior member of Lebanon's Hezbollah organisation. He was alternatively described as the head of its security section, a senior intelligence official and as one of the founders of the organisation. Mugniyah has been associated with the Beirut barracks bombing and US embassy bombings, both of which took place in 1983 and killed over 350, as well as the kidnapping of dozens of foreigners in Lebanon in the 1980s. He was indicted in Argentina for his alleged role in the 1992 Israeli embassy attack in Buenos Aires. The highest-profile attacks for which it is claimed he is responsible took place in the early 1980s, shortly after the founding of Hezbollah. He is thought to have killed more United States citizens than any other militant before the 2001 US attacks, and the bombings and kidnappings he is alleged to have organized are credited with all but eliminating the US military presence in Lebanon in the 1980s.[1]
Information about him is limited. He is reported by the US FBI to have used the alias of Hajj,[2] and to have been called Abu Dokhan, Arabic for "smoke-bearer" or "father of smoke"—according to US fiction writer Richard Couch because of his skill at disappearing when being pursued. Mughniyah was included in the European Union's list of wanted terrorists.[3][4][5] and had a US$5 million bounty on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list.[6]
Imad Mughniyah was killed on February 12, 2008 by a car bomb, planted inside the driver's headrest,[7] around 11:00 pm local time in the Kfar Suseh neighborhood of Damascus, Syria.[8][9] As Mughniyah passed the car on foot, the bomb was detonated. Mughniyeh’s body parts were later found scattered across the street.[10]
Contents |
Mughniyah was born in Tayr Dibba to a family of poor farmers who harvested olives and lemons in the orchards of Lebanon's southern Shi'a heartland.[11] CIA South Group records state that Mughniyah lived in Ayn Al-Dilbah, a slum in South Beirut.[12]
Mughniyeh is described as having been a popular boy and a "natural entertainer" who cracked jokes at family weddings and "worked the crowd with a confidence unusual for a youth his age."[11]
Mughniyah became active in the Palestinian Fatah movement at an early age. He was discovered by fellow Lebanese Ali Abu Hassan Deeb (who would later become a leader in Hizbullah) and quickly rose through the ranks of the movement.[13] In the mid-1970s, Mugniyah organized the "Student Brigade," a unit of 100 young men which became part of Yasser Arafat's elite Force 17.[11] Mughniyah temporarily left Fatah in 1981 due to differences of opinion on the regime of Saddam Hussein. Mughniyah was a Shiite and deeply religious and was upset by the murder of the Iraqi Grand Ayatullah Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr in 1980 as well as a previous attempt by the Iraqi intelligence on the life of Lebanese Ayatullah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah.[13]
Fatah was formally in alliance the Lebanese National Movement, which included the Lebanese pro-Iraqi branch of the Ba’th party. Mughniyah and some of his Lebanese Shiite comrades were forced to leave Fatah after engaging in armed confrontations with Ba’th party activists. They had previously organized a body guard unit for Ayatullah Fadlallah and other Shiite clerics in Lebanon. Mughniyah accompanied Ayatullah Fadlallah on a Hajj pilgrimage in 1980 and thus earned his Hajj title.[13]
Mughniyeh was a student in the engineering department at the American University of Beirut[14] in 1981 when the United States of America gave the "green light" for Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon in pursuit of the Palestine Liberation Organization.[15]
When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 Mughniyah was in Iran but hurried back to Beirut where he rejoined Fatah and participated in the defence of West Beirut and was wounded in the fighting. After the withdrawal of PLO forces from Beirut in September 1982 Mughniyah acquired an important position in the nascent resistance to the Israeli occupation due to his knowledge of arms cashes left behind by the Palestinians. He remained a Fatah member during this period but also worked with other factions, such as the leftist Lebanese National Movement and Islamic resistance groups. Mughniyah remained a member of Fatah until 1984 when he joined the newly created Islamic Resistance of the Hezbullah. He remained however close to Fatah leader Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) until the latter’s death in 1988. He also remained deeply committed to the Palestine cause throughout his life and apparently founded a secret "Committee for Elimination of Israel" (لجنة لإزالة إسرائيل) inside the Hizbullah in 2000. In later years, and especially after the Oslo accords, Mughniyah and the Hizbullah sided with the more militant Palestinian factions such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.[13]
Mughniyeh had been working as the bodyguard for Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, a spiritual mentor to many in Lebanon's Shi'a community whose political consciousness was on the rise. Fadlallah held no formal political role, "opposed violence and sectarian division, and defied growing Iranian influence in Lebanon."
Mughniyah was accused of terrorist attacks in the 1980s and 1990s, primarily against American and Israeli targets. These allegations include the April 18, 1983 bombing of the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 63 people including 17 Americans. Agreement is not universal on Mughniyah's involvement as Caspar Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense at the time, told PBS in 2001, "We still do not have the actual knowledge of who did the bombing of the Marine barracks at the Beirut Airport, and we certainly didn't then."[15]
Mughniyeh was fingered as the mastermind of the October 23, 1983 simultaneous truck bombings against French paratroopers and the U.S. Marine barracks, attacks which killed 58 French soldiers and 241 Marines. On September 20, 1984, he is alleged to have attacked the US embassy annex building. The United States indicted him (and his collaborator, Hassan Izz al-Din) for the June 14, 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, which resulted in the death of U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem.[16] He was also linked to numerous kidnappings of Westerners in Beirut through the 1980s, most notably that of Terry Anderson, Terry Waite, and William Francis Buckley, who was the CIA station chief in Beirut. Some of these individuals were later killed, such as Buckley, who was hideously tortured and eventually murdered.[17] The remainder were released at various times with the last one, Terry Anderson, released in 1991. It is also believed that he took advantage of his status as a student in the American University of Beirut to enable him to assassinate Malcolm Kerr, president of the AUB, on campus in 1984. His stay at AUB as an engineering student was financed by a political organisation. Mugniyah has also been tied to the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, which killed 19 Americans and one Saudi citizen.[18]
On September 30, 1985, Mughniyeh allegedly organized the kidnapping of four diplomats from the Soviet Embassy in Beirut, one of whom he soon personally killed. The result of this kidnapping was Soviet pressure on Syria to stop its operations in Northern Lebanon in exchange for release of the remaining three hostages.[19] On March 8, 1985, the CIA carried out a reprisal operation funded by the Saudis, for the Marine barracks bombing of 1983, in which they attempted to kill Fadlallah by car-bombing. The cleric escaped harm, but the huge explosion wounded 200 and killed 62 in the poor Shi'a neighbourhood where he lived. Among the dead were Imad Mughniya's brother and some of Fadlallah's bodyguards and close friends.[15] Roger Morris claims that this was a "turning point" in Mughniyeh's life and that it was after this event that he "joined the terrorist arm of the increasingly militant political impulse among Lebanon's Shi'ah from which Hezbollah soon emerged, and as the resistance movement's chief of security and intelligence, he joined one of history's more vicious chain reactions."[15]
Mughniyah has been formally charged by Argentina with participating in the March 17, 1992 bombings of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 29 and the AMIA cultural building in July 1994, killing 86 people.[20] He has also been accused of orchestrating the 2000 capture of three Israeli soldiers in the northern part of Israel and the kidnapping of Israeli businessman Elchanan Tenenbaum, and of killing eight soldiers and abducting two in the 2006 Israel/Lebanon conflict.
While the long international hunt for Mughniyah produced many allegations, they were denied or dismissed by Hezbollah. In a July 2003 interview Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah told Time Magazine that the U.S. accusations against Mughniyah were "just accusations," and he questioned whether they could provide evidence to condemn Mughniyah. Nasrallah also stated that, "Hajj Imad is among the best freedom fighters in the Lebanese arena. He had a very important role during the occupation [of southern Lebanon by Israel]. But as for his relationship with Hezbollah, we maintain the tradition of not discussing names."[21]
According to Robert Baer "Mughniyah is probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we’ve ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. He enters by one door, exits by another, changes his cars daily, never makes appointments on a telephone, never is predictable. He only uses people that are related to him that he can trust. He doesn’t just recruit people."[22] He has been described as "tall, slender, well-dressed and handsome ... penetrating eyes," speaking some English but better French.[23]
Mugniyah has been allegedly linked to Palestinian operations such as the Karine A incident in 2002, where the Palestinian Authority was accused of importing fifty tons of weapons. He was a member of Force 17, an armed branch of the Fatah movement charged with providing security for Yasser Arafat and other prominent PLO officials.
In mid-February 1997, the pro-Israeli South Lebanese Army radio station reported that Iran's intelligence service had dispatched Mughniyah to Lebanon to directly supervise the reorganisation of Hezbollah's security apparatus concerned with Palestinian affairs in Lebanon and to work as a security liaison between Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence. Mughniyah also reportedly controlled Hezbollah's security apparatus, the Special Operations Command, which handles intelligence and conducts overseas terrorist acts. Allegedly, although he used Hezbollah as a cover, he reported to the Iranians.[24] According to Jeffery Goldberg, writing in the New Yorker, "It is believed that Mugniyah takes orders from the office of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, but that he reports to a man named Ghassem Soleimani, the chief of a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps called Al Quds, or the Jerusalem Force—the arm of the Iranian government responsible for sponsoring terror attacks on Israeli targets."[25]
The European Union lists him as "Senior Intelligence Officer of Hezbollah".[5]
Various law enforcement agencies attempted to capture Mughniyah. The United States tried to secure his capture in France in 1986, but were thwarted by French refusal to detain him.
The United States tried to capture him several times afterwards, beginning with a 1995 operation that was put in place after it was realized Mughniyah was flying a Middle East Airlines charter flight A-310 Airbus from Khartoum to Beirut after a meeting with several militant leaders, and was scheduled to make a stop-over in Saudi Arabia. But Saudi airport officials refused to allow the plane to make its stop-over, thwarting American bids to arrest Mughniyah.[26]
The next year, U.S. military personnel planned to seize him off a ship in Doha, Qatar, but the operation was called off. This plan, dubbed Operation RETURN OX, was carried out by ships and sailors of Amphibious Squadron Three (USS Tarawa, USS Duluth, USS Rushmore), Marines of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and Navy SEALs assigned to the U.S. Fifth Fleet. The operation was underway, but was canceled at the last minute when it could not be verified that Mughniyah was actually on board the Pakistani ship.
On October 10, 2001, Mughniyah appeared on the initial list of the FBI's top 22 Most Wanted Terrorists, which was released to the public by President Bush, with a reward of up to $5 million offered for information leading to his arrest.[27] This reward remained outstanding as of 2006.[2][28]
The Israeli government made several alleged attempts to assassinate Mughniyah. His brother Fuad Mugniyah was killed in a 1994 Beirut car bombing. (Another brother, Jihad, was killed in a car-bombing assassination attempt on the life of Hezbollah founder Sheikh Fadlallah in 1985, this one rumored to be the work of the CIA via the South Lebanese Army.)
The New Yorker magazine[29][30] suggested that Mugniyah attended a meeting between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He was there representing Hezbollah in Lebanon. Mugniyah had been informed that he was at the top of a US military and CIA assassination list. For this reason, he was said to avoid certain areas of Beirut for fear of being killed by CIA operators.
Imad Mughniyah was killed on February 12, 2008 by a car bomb blast around 11:00 pm local time in the Kfar Suseh neighborhood of Damascus, Syria.[8][9] He had been the target of Israeli Mossad assassination attempts since the 1990s.[31] Furthermore, The Times states that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met privately with Mossad director Meir Dagan on the day of Mughniyeh's burial, reportedly to congratulate him.[32] On February 27 Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported that several Arab states helped the Mossad carry out the bombing.[33] Accounts cited by the Jerusalem Post state that Mughniyeh was assassinated in revenge for the 2006 Lebanon War, which he had a role in instigating. Mossad tasked the Kidon unit, a school of assassins which operates under the Caesarea Branch, with the mission. An account stated that operatives entered Damascus. The team waited for Mughniyeh. When Mughniyeh walked past a car which had been loaded with explosives, the entire street shook. Mughniyeh’s body parts were later found scattered across the street. His assassination took Hizbullah completely by surprise, particularly Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the organization’s leader, who still delivers speeches from a bunker,[10] But Israel officially denied being behind the killing.[9] The U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell suggested that it is also possible that internal Hezbollah factions or Syria may be to blame for the killing.[34]
Without naming a source, the German newspaper Die Welt said[35] a story had been circulated amongst German diplomatic staff that it was possible that associates of Assef Shawkat had assassinated Mughniyah[36] in revenge for having tipped the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, about coup plot against him, which the Syrian government had foiled a couple of days before Mugniyah's assassination. Releasing the story in advance of going to print, Die Welt said the Syrian embassy in Berlin had rejected the coup story as utterly untrue.
At Mugniyah's funeral, Hassan Nasrallah appeared via video link and in the lengthy eulogy he delivered for his fallen comrade, he declared: "You crossed the borders. Zionists, if you want an open war, let it be an open war anywhere."[11][37]
| “ | He was one of the most dangerous terrorists ever on Earth. | ” |
|
—Danny Yatom, former head of the Mossad[38] |
||
Lebanese senior cleric Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah said that "the resistance has lost one of its pillars."[39]
Iran condemned the killing as: "yet another brazen example of organised state terrorism by the Zionist regime".[40]
According to The Sunday Times, Mughniyah was at a reception marking the 29th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution hosted by Iranian ambassador to Syria, Hojatoleslam Ahmad Musavi. Mughniyah left at 10:35 pm and went to his silver Mitsubishi Pajero nearby. The driver seat headrest had been replaced by one with a high-explosive, which detonated when Mughniyah entered the vehicle.[32]
The Syrian investigation found that he was killed by a car bomb parked nearby and detonated by remote.[41]
The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai reported that Hezbollah sources said they would retaliate for Mughniyah's death by assassinating Israeli leaders.[42]
The Bush administration welcomed news of his death. A spokesman of the U.S. State Department said: "The world is a better place without this man in it. He was a coldblooded killer, a mass murderer and a terrorist responsible for countless innocent lives lost. One way or another he was brought to justice."[43]
The assassination of Mughniyah was condemned in some parts of the world. Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema termed the assassination "terror" in an interview,[44] while Gideon Levy of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz claimed the assassination actually undermined Israel's security.[45] In Kuwait, there was a rally mourning his death. A member of Kuwait's parliament asserted "Mugniyah is a martyr hero who shook the grounds beneath the Zionist enemy (Israel) and America,"[46] Jordan's largest political party condemned the assassination as a cowardly crime.[47] Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei said "The bloodthirsty Zionists must know that the pure blood of martyrs like Imad Mugniyah will grow hundreds like him and will increase resistance against corruption and atrocities twofold." When polled shortly afterwards, over 61 percent of Lebanese believed Hezbollah's retaliation for Imad Mugniyah's killing by Israel would be justified.[48]