The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks Page 10

  April 18, 1983

  U.S. Embassy in Beirut Bombing

  Overview: By the early 1980s, law in Lebanon had broken down and Beirut, often referred to as the Paris of the Middle East, had deteriorated into an ungovernable city, split between various factions that held turf rather than governed. Snipers and bombers roamed the city at will, threatening locals and foreigners alike. Hizballah, Islamic Jihad, and their adherents often targeted Westerners, kidnapping them and holding them for years until releasing them, sometimes dead, sometimes alive. In 1983, anti-U.S. militants upped the ante with massive car bomb attacks against the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks.

  Incident: On April 18, 1983, a U.S. Embassy car, which had been stolen in southern Lebanon, broke through a security barrier in front of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. An unidentified man then abandoned the vehicle just before it blew up, causing the collapse of the central section of the seven-story embassy building. Sixty-four people, including the fleeing terrorist, 17 Americans, 32 local embassy staffers, and 14 visa applicants and passersby, were killed in the blast. Another 123 people were wounded. The top Mideast expert from the Central Intelligence Agency, Robert Ames, and the deputy director of the Agency for International Development, William McIntyre, were among the dead, which also included members of the Departments of Defense and State. Even though Iran dissociated itself from the bomb attack, the Iranian-based Islamic Jihad (Muslim Holy War) claimed responsibility. The booby-trapped car was filled with 330 pounds of Hexogene, equivalent to 1,320 pounds of TNT. Many of the injured were in the visa applications section of the embassy.

  On July 26, 1985, a Lebanese military magistrate charged four extremists: Hussein Saleh Harb and Mahmoud Moussa Dairaki, both Lebanese; Muhammad Nayif al-Jada’, a Palestinian; and Sami Mahmoud Hujji, an Egyptian. Harb and Hujji were also charged with the 1981 bombing of the Iraq Embassy in Beirut that killed 48. By May 1986, Harb had been freed on £200,000 bail, after having been captured and held for some time. In November 1986, the military court magistrate called for the death sentence for six extremists accused of the U.S. Embassy bombing, including the four just named, all of whom were at large. At least eight others were suspected of having aided the accused in the bombing.

  On April 30, 1993, a military court ruled that the suicide truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy was a political crime and could not be punished under the political amnesty law. The ruling protected the accused, identified as Hussein Saleh Harb, Sami Mahmud al-Hijjah, Mahmud Musa al-Dirani, Muhammad Nayif al-Jada’, Hasan Muhammad Harb, and ‘Ali Mustafa Haydar. The ruling also considered the assassination of French military attaché Christian Gouttiere on September 18, 1986, as covered by the political amnesty law.

  The United States announced that it would close the U.S. offices of the Lebanese-based Middle East Airlines.

  On May 12, 1993, a military appeals court presided over by Judge Shaykh Amin Nassar overruled the lower court. The case was to be submitted to the Judiciary Council.

  On May 14, 1993, the Islamic Jihad protested the Lebanese government’s decision to repeal the military court’s ruling on the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Munif’ Uwaydat, attorney general at the Court of Appeals, prepared the request for repealing the ruling regarding military court’s standing in the case of the bombing. The military appeals court said in its repeal that crimes committed against foreign diplomatic missions were not covered by the law.

  On April 7, 2003, U.S. Agency for International Development official Anne Dammarell took the stand in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., as the lead plaintiff in a $5 billion lawsuit against Iran, identified as the sponsor of the bombing. Dammarrell was blown through a wall and sustained 19 broken bones, glass embedded in her skin, and posttraumatic stress disorder. More than 90 plaintiffs joined the suit. On September 8, 2003, U.S. district judge John D. Bates ruled that Iran had sponsored the bombing and awarded $129 million to 29 American victims and family members. Dammarell was awarded $6.7 million. Yvonne Ames, wife of Robert Ames, and their six grown children were awarded $38.2 million. Bates ruled that the plaintiffs were not entitled to punitive damages.

  October 23, 1983

  U.S. Marine and French Paratrooper Barracks in Lebanon Bombing

  Overview: Soon after the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Hizballah followed up with a coordinated attack against two military forces they deemed hostile. Hizballah exceeded the previous body count, and the U.S. administration contemplated pulling out of Lebanon.

  Incident: On October 23, 1983, a yellow Mercedes truck, packed with 2,000 pounds of a plastic explosive equivalent to 6 tons of TNT, drove through a barbed-wire perimeter fence and then passed a sandbag sentry post before coming to rest in the lobby of the Battalion Landing Team building, housing some of the U.S. Marines at Beirut International Airport. The ensuing blast created a crater 30 feet deep and 120 feet across and caused the four-story building to collapse instantly into smoldering rubble. Windows over a half mile away were shattered by the explosion. The 6:20 A.M. blast killed 241 American servicemen and injured over 80. Marine sentries were unable to fire on the truck because their weapons were kept unloaded per orders. A heavy iron gate placed between the barbed-wire fence and the ill-fated building had apparently been left open, allowing easy access for the suicide bomber.

  About 20 seconds after the blast, a second suicide bomber dr ove his car into the eight-story apartment building housing 110 French paratroopers. When the bomb detonated, the building folded, one floor upon the other, killing 58 soldiers and injuring at least 15 others. The second blast was 2 miles to the north of the airport in the Ramel el-Baida district in central Beirut.

  In a phone call to Agence France-Presse (AFP) offices in Beirut and Paris, Islamic Holy War (Islamic Jihad) claimed responsibility for both blasts. The caller issued the following statement:

  We are the soldiers of God and we crave death. Violence will remain our only path if they [foreign forces] do not leave. We are ready to turn Lebanon into another Vietnam. We are not Iranians or Syrians, or Palestinians. We are Lebanese Muslims who follow the dicta of the Koran.

  Islamic Jihad is closely linked to Hizballah (Party of God), whose leader was the radical Shi’ite Muslim Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. Fadlallah’s headquarters were in Baalbek, Lebanon. Husayn Musawi, Fadlallah’s strongman, headed the Islamic Amal faction, which was associated with Hizballah. The Islamic Amal had ties to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. Newspaper reports linked the Islamic Amal, Fadlallah, and Musawi to the two blasts.

  In an anonymous call to AFP, the suicide bombers were identified as Abu Mazin, 26, and Abu Sijan, 24. In another call to AFP, the Free Islamic Revolution Movement (aka the Islamic Revolutionary Movement) claimed responsibility for the bombings. The linkage between Hizballah, Islamic Jihad, Islamic Amal, and the Free Islamic Revolution Movement is difficult to untangle.

  On November 9, 1994, First Investigating Military Judge Riyad Tali’ issued judicial warrants to the Lebanese Army Intelligence Directorate, the State Security Intelligence Department, the Internal Security Forces, and the Judicial Police, asking them to search for and apprehend the bombers of the U.S. and French Marine barracks. Hizballah condemned the decision. The decision removed the protection of a civil war amnesty covering all acts of violence between 1975 and 1990.

  On March 17, 2003, some 600 relatives of the U.S. servicemen killed in the bombing filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., alleging Iranian culpability. U.S. district judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that Iran could be sued because the Marines were on a peacekeeping mission under peacetime rules of engagement, not rules of combat. He cited a 1996 law that permits U.S. citizens to take legal action against state sponsors of terrorism. The judge had entered default judgments against Iran on December 18, 2002, because of its failure to respond to the lawsuit. On May 30, 2003, Judge Lamberth ruled that Iran was behind the bombing, thereby permitting the relatives to collect damages against Iran. Lamberth said a court-a
ppointed master would consider the financial claims. On September 7, 2007, Lambert ordered that Iran pay $2,656,944,877 to the circa 1,000 family members and survivors, specifying individual awards down to the dollar. The largest award of $12 million went to Larry Gerlach, who sustained a broken neck and became a permanent quadriplegic. As of late 2013, payment has yet to be made.

  June 23, 1985

  Air India Flight 182 Bombing

  Overview: Sikh militants generally confined their operations to the region of conflict between India and Pakistan. Seeking revenge for the Indian army’s storming of the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984 in which hundreds died, some Sikhs in Canada expanded their operations to conduct a high-profile airliner bombing campaign that presaged the al Qaeda simultaneous mass-casualty, multiple-target attack template.

  Incident: On June 23, 1985, Air India flight 182, en route from Toronto to Bombay with intermediate stops in Montreal, London, and New Delhi, disappeared from Shannon Airport radar at 31,000 feet altitude, 90 miles from the Irish coast. The B-747 carried 329 people, including 4 infants and 77 children. Passengers included 279 Canadians and 7 Americans; most of the rest were Indian. Four helicopters of the Royal Air Force searched for survivors and debris. Everyone had perished in the worst airplane crash over water and the third worst in aviation history.

  An hour earlier, a bomb placed in a suitcase aboard Canadian Pacific Airlines flight 003, en route from Vancouver to Tokyo with 374 passengers and 16 crew, exploded after being unloaded at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. The suitcase was in a baggage container waiting to be loaded onto Air India flight 301 to Bombay. Baggage handlers Hideo Asano and Hideharu Koda were killed when the bomb prematurely exploded in the baggage area of Narita Airport; four other airport employees were injured. The baggage aboard the Canadian Pacific flight had not been given X-ray surveillance for explosives. Authorities at the Toronto airport confirmed that the surveillance equipment was malfunctioning on June 23, 1985, and that many pieces of luggage placed aboard flight 182 had not been screened for explosives.

  In two anonymous phone calls to the New York Times, self-proclaimed spokesmen took credit for the Air India crash on behalf of two Sikh separatist groups—the Sikh Student Federation and the Kashmir Liberation Front. In a call to the Canadian Broadcasting Company, a selfproclaimed spokesman claimed credit on behalf of a third extreme Sikh group.

  India conducted the investigation into the crash. Experts from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada assisted. Evidence included 50 video films of the aircraft wreckage, the results of autopsies performed on the bodies, 4,000 photographs, the cockpit voice recorder, the digital flight data recorder, and recovered pieces of the wreckage. The overwhelming evidence pointed to a mid-air bomb blast:

  The wreckage was strewn over a 5-mile area.

  The autopsies revealed that many of the victims suffered injuries caused by a sudden deceleration.

  The two black boxes stopped functioning the moment that the plane left the radar screen.

  A large piece of the lower skin of the forward luggage hold, recovered by Canadian salvage teams on October 22, 1985, contained 30 holes, pierced from the inside.

  A second piece of wreckage had burn marks on it.

  The flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder recovered on July 11, 1985, in 6,600 feet of ocean indicated that an explosion had occurred.

  On November 21, 1985, India’s director of air safety, H. S. Khola, issued a report that concluded that a bomb had caused the crash. On February 26, 1986, a judicial inquiry in New Delhi concluded that a suitcase planted by a terrorist caused the explosion. The 212-page report submitted to the Indian Civil Aviation Ministry indicated that a bomb had been placed aboard the ill-fated plane’s forward luggage compartment in Toronto. The report accused two Sikh extremists—Lal Singh and Annand Singh—of having placed the bomb on board. The Singh brothers had booked tickets on flight 182. Even though they had checked luggage on the flight for Bombay, neither of them boarded the flight. The report also implicated the brothers in the explosion at the Tokyo Airport. On June 20, 1985, the brothers booked tickets on the Canadian Pacific Airlines flight 003 to Tokyo. In Tokyo, they were scheduled to transfer to Air India flight 301, the flight for which the suitcase bomb had been intended. At Vancouver, a man named A. Singh checked in one or more bags for flight 003, which were to be transferred to Air India flight 301 in Tokyo. Neither L. Singh nor A. Singh boarded flight 003.

  The Singh brothers had attended a mercenary training camp in Birmingham, Alabama, in the early part of 1985. They had told the camp director, Frank Camper, that they were preparing an “offensive” that summer. In the training camp, they were taught the use of weapons and explosives. Investigators believed that a time bomb had been used in each incident. The bomb at the Tokyo Airport had exploded prematurely, causing the death of the two baggage handlers.

  Lal Singh and Annand Singh were also wanted for a plot to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi during his scheduled visit in June 1985. As of November 1988, the Singh brothers were at large.

  Prosecutors said Sikh militants built the bomb in British Columbia.

  On June 10, 1991, Justice Raymond Paris of Canada’s British Columbia Supreme Court sentenced to 10 years in prison Inderjit Singh Reyat, 39, a Canadian Sikh who was convicted on May 10, 1991, on two counts of manslaughter and four explosives offenses for making a bomb that exploded at the Tokyo airport. Justice Paris said that the former auto electrician at the very least helped others build a suitcase bomb that was to have been used to blow up an Indian airliner. Reyat was the only person charged with the blast. He was a devout Sikh who aided members of the militant Babbar Khalsa, a Sikh nationalist organization. On February 10, 2003, Reyat pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the Air India 182 case. He was sentenced to five years for helping acquire the materials used to make the bomb. Prosecutors said he did not know who made the bomb and thought the material would be used for bombs in India. The surprise plea came less than two months before he and two other men were to stand trial on murder charges in the case.

  On October 27, 2000, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers in Vancouver arrested Ripudaman Singh Malik, a millionaire who ran a Vancouver radio station, and Ajaib Singh Bagri, a sawmill worker from Kamloops, British Columbia. They faced eight charges, including first-degree murder, conspiracy, and attempted murder in the killing of the 329 people on the Air India flight 182 bombing. They were also charged with the attempted murder of the passengers and crew in the Tokyo explosion. On April 28, 2003, their trial began. On March 16, 2005, British Columbia Supreme Court justice Ian Josephson acquitted Malik and Bagri of murder and other charges in the Air India 182 case and of the bombing in Tokyo. The judge said key witnesses were not credible.

  October 7, 1985

  Achille Lauro Seajacking

  Overview: A dizzying blizzard of Palestinian terrorist groups jockeyed for position in the 1970s and 1980s to gain leadership of the Palestinian struggle against Israel and its allies. Groups conducted campaigns of bombings, assassinations, hijackings, and barricade-and-hostage operations against primarily European targets throughout Europe and the Middle East. The Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) garnered extensive publicity with its shipjacking and brutal murder of a wheelchair-bound American, whose body they threw off the ship. Post-incident handling of the case strained U.S.–Egyptian relations and led to the resignation of the Italian government. The search for the Abu Abbas–led group took years, but eventually the perpetrators were rendered to justice.

  Incident: On October 3, 1985, the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro set sail from Genoa, Italy, carrying 754 passengers and 331 crew. As scheduled, the ship made calls at Naples and Syracuse. When it docked in Alexandria, 634 passengers disembarked for an overland trip to the Pyramids with plans to reboard the ship at Port Said. Thirty miles from the next port-of-call, on October 7, 1985, four terrorists armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, eight grenades, and
other weapons seized the ship. The takeover took place at 1:00 p .m. when the terrorists fired warning shots in the main dining room. Two hostages were slightly injured by gunfire during the initial takeover. The hijackers held 331 crew and 116 passengers hostage, including 12 Americans. The terrorists collected the passengers’ passports and grouped people according to nationalities. The Americans were ordered onto the top deck, where for four grueling hours of heat, they were not given water. Hostages included people from West Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, and the Netherlands. The hijackers ordered Capt. Gerardo de Rosa to head to Syria. On the morning of October 8, 1985, the ship was off the coast of Tartus, Syria. By radio, the hijackers, who identified themselves as members of the PLF, requested permission to dock. Syria denied the request. The hijackers demanded the release of 50 Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israel. At 2:42 p .m ., one hijacker radioed Syrian authorities, saying “We have no more time. We will start executing at 3:00 p.m. sharp.” At 2:55 p .m., they warned, “We have five minutes only.” The hijackers singled out Leon Klinghoffer, 69, an American confined to a wheelchair. Klinghoffer was shot in the head and chest. The hijackers then ordered two of the hostages to dump Klinghoffer in his wheelchair overboard.

  Israel responded to the hijackers’ demands by reiterating its policy of not conceding to terrorists. The United States announced that the USS Saratoga, an aircraft carrier, and the USS Scott, a guided-missile destroyer, were steaming to the vicinity of the Achille Lauro. The Delta Force was also dispatched to the region.