The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks Page 11
Israel believed that the four hijackers—Bassam Ashqar, 17; Majid Yusuf al-Mulki, 23; Mar’uf Ahmad al-As’adi, 23; and ‘Abdal-Latif Ibrahim Fatayer, 20—had been sent by Mohammad Abbas Zaidan (Abu Khalid) on a suicide mission to Ashdod, Israel. In an interview with CBS Radio after the incident ended, Abbas confirmed that the terrorists were, indeed, en route to a suicide mission inside Israel when the boat hijacking occurred.
When Syria refused their request to dock, the hijackers ordered the captain to head back toward Port Said. On October 9, 1985, the ship was 12 miles off the coast of Port Said. During the early afternoon, the terrorists communicated with Egyptian officials by ship-to-shore radio. Egyptian defense minister Mohammad Abu Ghazala headed the negotiations. Two Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representatives—Hani Hassan and Zahdi Qoudra—in Cairo assisted with the negotiations. The PLF interests were represented in Cairo by Abbas. At 4:20 P.M., the negotiators agreed in principle on a deal with the hijackers, where by the hostages would be freed in exchange for safe passage to Tunis for the hijackers. The incident ended at 5:00 P.M. when Abbas and Egyptian authorities took a small boat to the ship and boarded it.
The United States immediately requested that Egypt turn the hijackers over to them to face trial.
On the morning of October 10, 1985, Egyptian president Mubarak announced that the hijackers had already departed Egypt.
The Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence sources used electronic eavesdropping devices to establish that the terrorists were still in Egypt. At 7:00 p.m., the USS Saratoga, off the coast of Albania, turned around, and seven F-14 fighter jets took off, supported by E2C Hawkeye electronic surveillance planes. At 9:15 P.M., a chartered Egyptair B-737 left Cairo with Abbas, Hani Hasan, and the four hijackers. The surveillance planes intercepted the B-737, which had been refused permission to land in Tunis and Athens. The F-14s flashed their lights to convince the Egyptair pilot that he was surrounded. The F-14s ordered the B-737 to follow them to Sigonella, a U.S.–Italian air base in Sicily. U.S. commandos, Italian soldiers, and police took the four hijackers and two Palestinian officials into custody. Seventeen Egyptian passengers were also on the plane.
The four hijackers were arrested by Italian authorities, but the two Palestinian officials were only detained for questioning. On October 12, 1985, Abbas and Hasan boarded the Egyptair B-737 and took off from Ciampino Airport to Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome. At 7:10 P.M., the two boarded a Yugoslav JAT Airways jet for Belgrade and freedom. The United States protested the escape of Abbas, whom the United States wanted to charge with sea piracy. At the time of his release, the United States was preparing papers asking Italy to extradite Abbas and the four hijackers. U.S. attorney general Edwin Meese characterized Abbas as “an international criminal” and vowed that the United States would do everything possible to bring Abbas to justice.
A fifth Palestinian—Muhammad Isa Abbas, 25—was charged on October 14, 1985, with complicity in the hijacking. Abbas, a cousin of the Abbas who masterminded the operation, was arrested as he disembarked from a ship from Tunis on September 28, 1985, five days before the departure of the Achille Lauro. A sixth Palestinian, who departed the Achille Lauro in Alexandria, was also being sought.
On October 16, 1985, the Israeli government released a partial transcript of a ship-to-shore telephone conversation between the hijackers and Abbas. The transcript clearly indicated that Abbas had been in control of the terrorists during the hijacking.
On October 17, 1985, Italian prime minister Bettino Craxi announced the resignation of his cabinet in the wake of the government’s handling of Abbas.
On October 23, 1985, hijacker Mur’uf Ahmad al-As’adi turned state’s evidence. As’adi identified Abbas as having masterminded their mission. Majid Yusuf al-Molqi was identified as the head of the terrorist squad and as the one who murdered Klinghoffer.
On October 26, 1985, Italian authorities revealed that a sixth suspect— Yusef Ali Yuseb Ismail—had been arrested.
On November 3, 1985, Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA) wire service revealed that a senior aide to PLF leader Abbas had been aboard the Achille Lauro. Abd al-Rahim Khalid traveled under a stolen Greek passport bearing the name Petros Flores. Khalid was believed to have left the ship at Alexandria.
On November 13, 1985, Italian authorities issued arrest warrants for 16 PLF members connected with the hijacking. Only seven were in custody— the four hijackers, Muhammad Isa Abbas, Yusuf Ali Ismail, and Ibrahim Husari. Arrest warrants were also issued for:
Mohammad Abbas Zaidan (alias Abu Khalid)
Izz al-Din Badra Khan, PLF military chief
Ziyad al-Umar, the PLF member who bought the cruise tickets
Muhammad Jarbu’, a PLF member scheduled to be aboard the ship but who fell ill before the ship departed
Abu Kifah, who helped smuggle the arms
Al-Khadrah, who helped smuggle the arms
Abd al-Rahim Khalid, 49, who got off the ship at Alexandria
Abu’ Ali Kazim, a bodyguard for Abbas Zaidan
Yusuf Hishamal-Nasir, a PLF informer in Italy
On November 18, 1985, the four hijackers and Mohammad Isa Abbas, who allegedly smuggled the Kalashnikov rifles into Italy, were tried on arms smuggling charges. All were found guilty. Isa Abbas was sentenced to nine years in prison, and Yusuf al-Molqi was sentenced to eight years. The others were sentenced to between four and five years.
On June 18, 1986, the murder and kidnapping trial opened in Genoa. Al-Molqi, As’adi, and Fatayer were in the courtroom, along with accused accomplices Isa Abbas and Mohammad Gandour, 37. Gandour had been arrested in Rome in early September 1985 for possession of fake documents. He was an alleged courier and financier for the hijackers. Ten others, including Abbas, were tried in absentia.
On July 10, 1986, the Italian court sentenced 11 men convicted in the trial. PLF leader Abbas was sentenced to life imprisonment. Al-Molqi was sentenced to 30 years. Izz al-Din Badra Khan and Ziyad al-Umar were sentenced to life. Fatayer was sentenced to 24 years. As’adi was sentenced to 15 years and 2 months. Isa Abbas received a six-month sentence for using a false passport. Gandour was sentenced to eight months and freed because he had already served the time awaiting trial.
On August 1, 1986, Yusuf Hisham al-Nisir was arrested in Viechtach, West Germany. Al-Nisir had been sentenced, in absentia, to six and a half years for providing weapons to the hijackers.
On December 6, 1986, Ashqar was found guilty of complicity in the murder of Klinghoffer and was sentenced to 16 years and 3 months by a juvenile court.
On May 19, 1989, Swedish police arrested a Palestinian believed to have been involved in the case.
On December 24, 1990, three weeks before the opening of the Allied air attacks on Iraq occupation forces in Kuwait, a Genoa magistrate freed Isa Abbas and Yusuf Ahmed Saad—who were jailed in the case—under an amnesty program. Their lawyers said that they were immediately expelled from Italy and apparently went to Algeria.
On March 5, 1991, Athens police arrested Khalid, 57, one of three masterminds of the attack, and three Greeks in the home of Petros Floros, a friend in central Athens, who had been acquitted in the Achille Lauro case. (Floros had been accused of giving Khalid his passport so that he could board the ship.) Police said that they had been planning to bomb a Barclays Bank branch; they found dynamite and a gasoline bomb on the premises of the house. Police also found drugs in Khalid’s home. A court in Genoa, Italy, had convicted Khalid in absentia in 1986 and sentenced him to seven and a half years in prison. After prosecution protests, in May 1987 a Genoa appeals court increased the sentence to life imprisonment. Rome requested extradition. On March 20, 1991, Athens police said that Khalid admitted to having planned the attack. On May 6, 1991, Khalid, using the name Mohammed Nouami, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for drug dealing.
On May 29, 1991, an Athens appeal council decided to extradite to Italy Khalid. He tried to escape from Koridhallos maximum security pri
son near Piraeus with 31 others on May 12, 1991, but was arrested.
On October 25, 1991, the Greek Supreme Court ruled in favor of Italy’s extradition request. Khalid was serving a 33-month sentence for trying to escape from Koryda prison.
On February 21, 1994, a Swedish court issued a warrant for the arrest of Samir Muhammad al-Qadir, an operations officer of the Abu Nidal group suspected of being the mastermind in the Achille Lauro case.
On January 26, 1995, Warsaw’s Gazeta Polska reported that the terrorists were armed with Kalashnikovs supplied by three Polish generals.
On April 13, 2003, U.S. Special Operations troops captured Abu Abbas in southern Baghdad. He died of natural causes on March 8, 2004, in U.S. custody in Iraq.
On July 7, 2008, Fatayer, 43, was ordered freed, having served his 25-year sentence (reduced for good behavior).
On April 30, 2009, al-Molqi was released early from a prison in Palermo, Italy. He had served nearly 24 years of his 30-year sentence.
April 5, 1986
Berlin La Belle Discotheque Bombing
Overview: Libyan leader Col. Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi supported numerous Palestinian and other Middle Eastern terrorist groups during his 40-plus year reign. Guns, money, safe haven, and other operational support were easily available to itinerant terrorists visiting Benghazi and Tripoli. Qadhafi’s efforts to expand his idiosyncratic ideology throughout the Middle East and Africa fell on deaf ears, but terrorist groups were willing to make appropriate statements of agreement in return for aid. Evidence of Libyan involvement in a direct attack against U.S. interests in Europe was more than the Reagan administration was willing to take. In the absence of stronger Western support against Libya, the bombing of La Belle Disco sparked an airstrike by the United States that quieted Qadhafi’s attacks, but for a short time only.
An attack on an airliner carrying Americans two years later showed that Qadhafi was not easily deterred from his dreams of rule by his Green Book. Increased sanctions against his support of the bombings of Western aircraft eventually led to his renunciation of terrorism and dismantling of his weapons of mass destruction programs. Qadhafi and his rule came to a violent end as part of the extended Arab Spring of 2011, in which numerous despotic regimes were overturned by popular uprisings.
Incident: On April 4, 1986, at 1:45 A.M., a 4.5-pound bomb placed near the dance floor destroyed La Belle Discotheque located in Friedenau in the West Berlin’s Schoeneberg district. At the time of the explosion, about 500 people packed the discotheque. The blast blew a hole through the ceiling and the cellar below, and destroyed the walls. A female survivor recalled, “The lights suddenly went out and then a deafening explosion, and the ceiling and all these cables came down on my head and I thought, ‘Oh, God, now I die.’ There was blood all over, legs sticking out of the debris and people were walking on my head.” The blast killed three people—Sgt. Kenneth Terrance Ford, 21; Nermine Haney, 28; and S. Sgt. James E. Goins, 26. The 231 wounded included 62 Americans, plus West Germans, Turks, and Arabs. Ford and Goins were U.S. servicemen; Haney was a Turkish woman.
On April 5, 1986, three groups claimed credit. One was the hitherto unknown Anti-American Liberation Front. The other two were the Holger Meins Commando, an offshoot of the Red Army Faction (RAF), and the RAF.
On April 7, 1986, Richard Burt, the U.S. ambassador to West Germany, told the Today show, “There is very clear evidence that there is Libyan involvement.” Burt said that the evidence was “hard” that the perpetrator operated out of the Libyan People’s Bureau in East Berlin.
On April 8, 1986, the United States gave decoded messages between Libya and its East Berlin embassy to the West German government. Prior to the attack, the intercepted messages appeared to indicate that an operation was planned. Following the attack, a message was received that appeared to offer praise for a job well done.
On April 8, 1986, the Bild Zeitung reported that a Libyan diplomat posted in East Berlin, Al-Amin ‘Abdullah al-Amin, was suspected by West German police as having organized the bombing.
President Ronald Reagan said in an April 9, 1986, news conference that the United States was prepared to retaliate militarily if there was proof linking Libya to the discotheque bombing.
On April 11, 1986, U.S. officials told of a warning of an attack against U.S. servicemen in West Berlin. The officials said that the so-called warning came too late to alert military personnel.
On April 12, 1986, the United States, Britain, and France agreed to ban suspected terrorists from entering West Berlin from the east. A series of security measures were installed.
On April 14, 1986, U.S. war planes left air bases in Britain to launch retaliatory strikes against targets in Libya. The raid started on April 15, 1986, at 2:00 A.M. local time. U.S. government officials cited the La Belle bombing as motivating the strikes.
On April 20, 1986, West German police arrested Ahmed Nawaf Mansour Hasi, 35, as a suspect. Evidence gathered from the London-based investigation into the April 17, 1986, attempted bombing of an El Al plane by Nezar Hindawi led to the arrest of Hasi, the brother of Hindawi. During a police lineup, “about a hundred witnesses” present at the La Belle bombing identified Hasi as being at the discotheque, according to newspaper reports. During interrogation, Hasi admitted responsibility for the March 29, 1986, bombing of the Arab–German Friendship Society but denied any involvement in the La Belle bombing. Hasi’s confession led to the arrest of two alleged accomplices—Farouk Salameh and Fayez Sahawneh—for the March 29, 1986, bombing. Hasi and Salameh were found guilty of the March 29, 1986, bombing but were never charged in the La Belle bombing.
On August 27, 1986, Italian police arrested Jordanian citizen Gassan Belbeasi, 25, on suspicion that he belonged to an international terrorist group linked to the Berlin bombing. Belbeasi, a student at the medical school of the University of Genoa, was questioned. His two roommates were also arrested and questioned.
On January 18, 1987, the Berliner Morgenpost reported that a letter found on Awni Hindawi, a cousin of Nezar Hindawi, suggested a link between Nezar Hindawi and Syrian contacts in the discotheque bombing.
On January 11, 1988, authorities arrested Kristine Endrigkeit in Lubeck, West Germany. She was charged with planting the bomb in La Belle Discotheque. According to authorities, she was following the orders of Hasi and Hindawi.
On April 19, 1993, the trial opened at the Twenty-Ninth Grand Criminal Bench of the Berlin Region Court, where Imad Mugniyah, 37, pleaded not guilty to charges of planning attacks on members of the U.S. military. The stateless Palestinian said that he would probably rely upon his right to remain silent in the case. He had been in custody since November 16, 1992. Prosecution lawyers accused Mugniyah of planning attacks on a U.S. military bus and on an unspecified bar frequented by U.S. soldiers in West Berlin in March 1986. Members of the Libyan People’s Bureau (embassy) in East Berlin delivered weapons to his flat in West Berlin. Threats from Libya against the United States resulted in the police tightening controls and caused the would-be attackers to drop their plans. Instead, they set off an incendiary in La Belle.
In August 1993, German federal authorities began trying to obtain the extradition of stateless Palestinian Yusef Shuraydi, who was arrested in Lebanon, on charges of being involved in La Belle Disco attack. In 1986, he was a diplomat at the Libyan People’s Bureau in East Berlin. In 1992, he was detained in Lebanon pending extradition.
On January 12, 1994, Beirut’s al-Diyar identified him as Yasir al-Shuraydi (variant Shuraydi), a Palestinian being held in Tyre prison on charges of attempted murder and forgery. He could face other charges in seven pending cases. Several charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence. He was due to face public trial later that month. The paper noted:
In 1983, when al-Shuraydi lived in Libya, Germany called on that country to extradite him. He was later implicated in the murder of a Libyan citizen called Mustafa al-’Ashiq. Al-Shuraydi, born in 1959 and a resident of ‘Ayn al-Hulwah camp, hails from the al-S
afsaf, a village in northern Palestine.
On June 21, 1994, a Sidon, Lebanon tribunal acquitted Shuraydi on charges of murdering a Libyan dissident in West Berlin in 1984. The chief witness recanted testimony.
On August 2, 1994, Lebanese authorities released Shuraydi to the consternation of the Germans, who claimed the Americans were slow in providing material crucial to the extradition request. The Washington Post reported that Stasi documents indicated that he had told a Lebanese court that he began working in 1984 as a driver in the East Berlin Libyan People’s Bureau, which provided him with a Libyan passport for the alias Yussef Salam. German officials believed he was tied to Abu Nidal and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Stasi files noted that a planning meeting was held on March 26, 1986, in a Vienna Street apartment in West Berlin’s Kreuzberg section.
Shuraydi was extradited from Lebanon to Germany on May 23, 1996, after Bonn agreed not to send him for trial to the United States or Turkey, where he faced the death penalty.
On June 17, 1996, former East German Stasi Lt. Col. Rainer Wiegand, the star witness against Shuraydi, died in a head-on collision with a meat truck in Portugal. Police suspected foul play.
On January 8, 1997, Greece said it would extradite Andrea Hausler, 31, in connection with the bombing. She was arrested in October 1996 at the request of German authorities while she was vacationing in the Chalkidiki resort near Thessaloniki. Justice Minister Evanghelos Yanopou-los signed the extradition order on January 7, 1997.
On February 7, 1997, state prosecutor Dieter Neumann accused the Libyan intelligence service of having instigated the bombing. Five people, including a Libyan, were indicted.
On August 25, 1997, Italian police arrested Musbah Abulgasem Eter, 40, a Libyan wanted in Germany and believed to be the only remaining fugitive with a direct role in the bombing. He had shown up at the German Embassy in Malta in 1995, offering to blame everything on Libya. He claimed he had seen cables between the Libyan People’s Bureau and Said Rashid, the head of Libyan intelligence, who had also been tied to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie. Eter claimed Rashid ordered the bombing after U.S. planes sank two Libyan patrol boats in the Gulf of Sirte in March 1986. Eter said Shuraydi was the mastermind. Eter later flew to Libya unmolested. He flew to Berlin to await trial but ran off again. He was arrested in Rome at a hotel across from the Libyan Embassy, where he was found with a suitcase full of cash.