The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks Read online

  Shuraydi denied prosecution claims that he had been a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command (PFLP-GC) since 1976. They said he had assassinated a Libyan exile in Berlin in 1984.

  On November 18, 1997, Eter, two other Libyan Embassy employees, and two German sisters went on trial. The embassy employees were Ali Chanaa, 39, a German citizen of Lebanese origin, and Shuraydi, 39. The two German sisters were Ali’s ex-wife Verena, 39, and Hausler. The charge sheet said Verena, accompanied by her sometime-prostitute sister, carried the bomb in her purse and planted it at the edge of the dance floor. They left five minutes before the explosion. Shuraydi and the Chanaas were charged with three counts of murder, nine counts of attempted murder, and causing a fatal blast. Eter and Hausler were charged as accessories. Everyone faced life in prison.

  The Chanaas were apparently Stasi informants. Verena had been convicted of spying by a Berlin court in 1993. She had received 6,000 marks for carrying the bomb; Ali received 9,000 marks. Prosecutors said Shuraydi and Ali made the bomb; Eter passed the Libyan Embassy’s money to them.

  On December 2, 1997, Eter recanted his confession implicating the other defendants and Libya.

  On November 13, 2001, German judge Peter Marhofer convicted and sentenced four defendants to 12–14 years for the bombing. He ruled that charges that Qadhafi ordered the bombing personally were not proven. Libya refused to extradite five other suspects.

  Verena Chanaa was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 14 years. Hausler was acquitted. Shuraydi was convicted of multiple counts of attempted murder and sentenced to 14 years.

  On August 10, 2004, Libya agreed to pay $35 million in compensation to 170 of the non-U.S. victims, including Germans who were wounded, and to the family of a Turkish woman who was killed. Libya refused to accept guilt, saying it was a “humanitarian gesture.”

  September 5, 1986

  Pan Am 73 Hijacking

  Overview: Terrorist hijackers from this era generally used their hostages for negotiations, at times killing one or more to establish their commitment to their negotiation position but with an eye to getting out of the situation alive and with some or all of their demands met. The Pan Am 73 incident was a rare case in which the terrorists turned their guns and grenades on the passengers before institution of a rescue operation by the authorities. Fatah renegade Abu Nidal’s organization, using cover names such as Black June, often reached new levels of ferocity in their attacks and at times turned on their own members. Court testimony of the hijackers presaged the 9/11 use of airplanes as weapons; the terrorists had planned to explode the plane, with themselves in it, over Israel.

  Incident: On September 5, 1986, the Libyan Revolutionary Cells and the Organization of the Soldiers of God–Martyr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Group separately claimed credit when four gunmen took over Pan Am flight 73 (Clipper Empress of the Seas), a B-747 that had just loaded passengers at Karachi, Pakistan, airport at 5:55 A.M. The plane was to fly from Bombay to New York via Karachi and Frankfurt. The hijackers stormed aboard dressed in security guard uniforms, killing American crew member Rajesh Kumar and injuring two Pakistani baggage handlers. Kumar had objected to the terrorists’ rough handling of the flight attendants. The hijackers shot him in the back of the head and threw him out of the plane. The three chief American crew members escaped out a hatch in the pilots’ compartment, there by grounding the plane with 399 people, including 44 Americans, 16 Italians, 15 Britons, 12 West Germans, 84 Pakistanis, 195 Indians, and 16 crew.

  The director general of Pakistan’s civil aviation department established contact with the hijackers, who demanded to be flown to Larnaca where they wished to secure the release of their friends in Cyprus— Briton Ian Davison, 27; Syrian Khalid ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Khatib, 28; and Jordanian ‘Abdal-Hakim Sa’du al-Khalifah, 29, who were convicted of the massacre on September 25, 1985, of three Israelis on a yacht at Larnaca marina in Cyprus. The group threatened to kill one of the 399 on the plane every 10 minutes if their demands that the cockpit crew return were not met by 7:00 P.M. Air marshal Khurshid Anwar Mirza won an extension of the deadline of several hours at 6:30 P.M. when he promised that a new Pan Am crew was en route. The group also demanded the release from Cyprus of Amin Sulayman Za’rur, 25, from Lebanon, who was arrested on August 14, 1986, 10 days after the rocket and mortar attack on the U.K. base at Akrotiri, in which two servicemen’s wives were slightly injured.

  Cyprus and Iran refused to allow the plane to overfly their air space or to land.

  The group was unable to find any American passports among those collected by the flight attendants—they had hidden the U.S. passports— but the hijackers selected that of a British school teacher from London, Michael John Thexton, 27, who they forced to come forward and stay with them for the next 14 hours.

  One of the hijackers, who went around barechested and called himself Rambo, identified himself as Zeba Hamid and claimed that it was his birthday. Another hijacker forced passengers to walk to the bathroom on their knees.

  As the hostage siege moved into evening, 16 hours after it began, the airplane’s lights began to dim as main and auxiliary generators began to run out of power. Thinking that the Pakistanis might be planning a rescue raid, the hijackers herded all of the passengers into the front compartment at 9:20 P.M. A few minutes later, Zayd Hassan Abd al-Latif Masud al-Safarini (at first only known as Mustafa and later as Mohbar Hussain), the hijackers’ leader, yelled, “Are you ready for the final episode? Prepare yourself! Jihad!” The hijackers then threw their grenades and fired two clips of ammunition into the hostages, killing 22 and injuring 100 others. An American passenger pushed a terrified flight attendant out of the way and opened one of the emergency doors. The passengers scrambled out of the plane.

  Safarini, who had explosives strapped to his body, ordered one of his compatriots to shoot him in the stomach to set off the explosives and kill everyone else on board. His colleague missed, winging him, and then fled. Pakistani security forces arrested the four hijackers. Alessandra Bettolo, a student from Italy, and her friend from Milan, Michele Colombo, 21, pointed out a hijacker who was trying to escape by posing as a passenger. Passengers attacked the hijacker, but the police rescued and arrested him.

  Pakistan claimed that it had sent a rescue squad, but some passengers disputed the claim. On September 14, 1986, the Washington Post reported that Pakistani snipers may have sparked the bloodbath by attempting to shoot the hijackers’ leader through the cockpit windows, which the bullets could not pierce.

  Twenty-five ambulances sped toward the plane, narrowly missing running over escaping passengers. Two of the ambulances carrying wounded passengers collided on the main road, injuring both drivers.

  Autopsies determined that 10 passengers died from gunfire, 7 from grenade shrapnel, and 4 from injuries suffered as they leaped from the wing of the plane. Among those killed were 3 Americans, 13 Indians, 2 Pakistanis, a Mexican, and an unidentified child. The injured included Americans, an Indian, a West German, a Briton, an Australian, and an Italian.

  Police arrested 100 Arabs residing in Pakistan for questioning.

  Three of the hijackers were held at the Malir Army Base 4 miles from the Karachi airport. A fourth gunman unsuccessfully attempted to escape from the hospital.

  The hijackers claimed after being arrested that they belonged to the International Revolutionary Organization. Safarini said he was a Palestinian and that two of the attackers were a Lebanese and a Syrian. A man with falsified Bahraini passport 250257 was also interrogated. Each hijacker gave six different names. Police learned that the hijackers purchased a Suzuki van in Karachi and were searching for its renter, a man named Joseph who met with Safarini several times. They had stayed in Karachi’s Taj Mahal Hotel, where they paid for 19 days accommodation and had security uniforms tailored locally. President Zia ul-Haq said that three of the hijackers were 19, 23, and 25 years of age.

  On September 8, 1986, the hijackers were charged with hijac
king, murder, attempted murder, and several other crimes. They were identified in court as Bomar Hussein (Mustafa), Abdullah Khalil, Nasir Husain, and Fahad. All carried Bahraini passports.

  On September 10, 1986, police arrested Wadoud Muhammad Hafiz alTurki (known at the time as Salman Tariki or Sulman Taraqi), who had a valid Libyan passport with a visa obtained at the request of the Libyan People’s Bureau and held a job with a maritime company that had offices in Tripoli. Hong Kong AFP reported that a companion of Turki fled into the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Islamabad, but a PLO spokesman denied that his group was involved. (On September 13, 1986, PLO leader Yasir Arafat offered to help track down the attackers. Pakistan declined his offer.) Turki had been in Pakistan for six weeks, arriving from Larnaca, Cyprus, where the gunmen had demanded to be taken. Pakistan said that Turki had masterminded the assault by the four Palestinians, who grew up in the Lebanese refugee camps. The four traveled to Pakistan separately after arriving in the country two weeks before the hijacking. Turki and the leader arranged for weapons and cased the airport. Turki led the authorities to a cache of East European weapons on the coast near Karachi that had not been used.

  The Civil Aviation Authority in Karachi reported on September 11, 1986, that threats had been made to hijack a Pakistan International Airlines jet to obtain the release of the four detained terrorists. On October 1, 1986, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency detained Yahya Abdus Salam, a Libyan commercial pilot trainee, who was suspected of being an associate of Turki.

  Abu Nidal sent a message to Pakistani president Zia ul-Haq, denying that his group was involved.

  On January 5, 1988, during their trial in a courtroom at Adiyala prison, the five accused hijackers (Safarini, Turki, Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim, Muhammad Abdullah Khalil Hussain ar-Rahayyal, and Muhammad Ahmad al-Munawor) admitted taking over the plane with the intention of blowing it up over Israel after securing the release of Palestinians from Israeli prisons. However, they claimed that Pakistani commandos were responsible for the deaths of those on board and said that they had intended to release the passengers. In a statement read by the Pakistani defense counsel the group said:

  We came to Pakistan to hijack an American airplane to instantly draw the whole world’s attention towards Palestine. Our aim was to hijack the plane, free all the hostages, and take the plane to various countries to get the release of 1,500 Palestinian freedom fighters. Our aim was to fly the plane toward some sensitive strategy center of the Zionist enemy and to blow it up with us inside. . . . We wanted to destroy the sensitive strategic center of the Zionists through an American weapon—the explosion of the American plane. By this we would have struck at American imperialism. We wanted to strike at both enemies with one weapon at one time.

  They claimed that they became frustrated by alleged delaying tactics of the Pakistani commandos, who “attacked the airplane without caring for the lives of the innocent passengers on board except the Americans. It was done only to please America, although many innocent passengers . . . were killed.” They claimed they chose the Pakistani location:

  due to the policies of the present regime, which maintains close relations with the great Satan, America . . . pro-American policies of this regime are detrimental not only to the Pakistani nation but to the Palestinian nation so. . . . All the Arab and Moslem governments maintain that they support the cause of Palestine. . . . In fact they support American imperialism and Israel. They declare they are friends of Palestine but the fact is that the jails of many Arab and Moslem countries are full of Palestinian prisoners.

  On September 28, 2001, Abu Nidal member Safarini was arrested after his release from a Pakistani prison where he had served 14 years for hijacking the plane. The Kuwaiti-born Safarini shot U.S. passenger Rajesh N. Kumar in the head. President George Bush announced on October 1, 2001, that he had been brought into Alaska and that he would be charged with murder. Safarini was arraigned in U.S. District Court on charges contained in a 126-count indictment issued in 1991. His trial began in federal court in Washington, D.C., in September 2001; he was accused of being the ringleader who ordered the other gunmen to shoot the passengers and throw grenades at them. Prosecutors sought the death penalty. On November 12, 2003, he pleaded guilty to the charges to avoid the death penalty. U.S. district judge Emmet G. Sullivan announced on December 16, 2003, that Safarini, 41, would be sentenced to life after Safarini pleaded guilty to 95 counts of murder, air piracy, and terrorism. On May 13, 2004, Safarini was given three consecutive life sentences plus 25 years. The judge recommended he be sent to a super-maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado, which also houses Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Ahmed Yousef.

  On January 9, 2010, Rahim, a Palestinian member of Abu Nidal with suspected al Qaeda ties, was killed in an air strike in North Waziristan, Pakistan. He had been tried and convicted in Pakistan in the Pan Am 73 attack, but he and three accomplices were freed in January 2008. The four made the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) Most Wanted Terrorist List in 2009.

  December 21, 1988

  Lockerbie Bombing

  Overview: The midair explosion of Pan Am 103 sparked one of the most puzzling whodunits in modern terrorism investigations. Initial theories looked at Iranian-sponsored Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine— General Command (PFLP-GC) terrorists out for revenge for the shootdown of an Iranian civil airliner in July 1988 by the USS Vincennes. Further investigation, however, pointed to two Libyans who worked at the behest of Qadhafi’s intelligence service. The United States eventually decided that Libyan perfidy was once again at play, and Tripoli had earned its inclusion on the list of patron state sponsors of terrorism.

  Incident: On December 21, 1988, a pressure-sensitive time bomb exploded on Pan Am flight 103 as it was flying from London to New York. The B-747 crashed into the Scotland town of Lockerbie, 15 miles north of the English border, killing all 258 on board plus 15 people in the town. Another 12 seriously burned villagers were hospitalized. The plane had left London’s Heathrow Airport at 6:25 P.M. It disappeared from radar contact at 7:15 P.M. when it was cruising at 31,000 feet.

  Investigators initially believed that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the PFLP-GC were responsible for the attack. The Guardians of the Islamic Revolution claimed credit, saying it was retaliating for the downing in July of an Iranian airliner by a U.S. warship in which 290 people died. A spokesman for the IRGC also claimed credit, although Iran denied responsibility. Fadl Shrourou, chief spokesman for Ahmed Jibril, leader of PFLP-GC, denied responsibility, although some observers noted that 13 members of the group had been arrested in Frankfurt on October 27, 1988.

  U.K. and U.S. investigators examined the theory that the bomb was unwittingly taken on board by Khalid Jaafer, 21, a U.S. citizen of Lebanese Shia origins, who was returning to Michigan after a visit to Lebanon and Frankfurt. They thought he may have carried the brown Samsonite bag containing the bomb, believing it contained heroin. He traveled from Beirut to Germany, where he stayed with a Lebanese friend who had a relative in Hizballah.

  On December 21, 1989, Muhammad Abu Talib was sentenced by the Uppsala, Sweden, town court to life imprisonment for attempted murder and gross destruction dangerous to the public for setting off two bombs in Copenhagen in July 1985 against the synagogue and against the Northwest Orient Airlines office, in which one person was killed and several others injured. Talib was also suspected by British police of participating in the Lockerbie bombing. Believed to be a member of PFLP-GC, Talib was one of 14 Arabs arrested on October 26, 1988, in Neuss, West Germany, where police found a weapons cache. The cache included altitude-sensitive detonators and three bombs built into Toshiba Bombeat 453 radio-cassette recorders. The Lockerbie bomb fragments exactly matched these components.

  A fragment of the detonator found in the Scottish countryside differed from the Neuss cache. The Pan Am 103 detonator lacked an altimeter and had only a timer. T
his type of detonator matched timers seized from two Libyan intelligence agents arrested in Dakar, Senegal, in February 1988 on an Air Afrique flight en route to the Ivory Coast.

  Bits of clothing in the suitcase in which the bomb exploded were traced to a clothing shop in Malta, a hangout for Libyans. The shopkeeper recalled selling it in November 1988 to a man with a Libyan accent. Investigators suspected the suitcase was sent to Frankfurt via Air Malta flight 180, then transferred unaccompanied to Pan Am 103.

  On June 26, 1991, French authorities announced evidence that senior Libyan officials, including Abdullah Senoussi, Qadhafi’s brother-in-law and de facto chief of Libyan intelligence, and Moussa Koussa, vice minister of foreign affairs, were involved in the September 1989 French UTA bombing and the bombing of Pan Am 103.

  On November 14, 1991, a federal grand jury in Washington issued 193 felony counts against Libyan intelligence officers Abdel Basset Ali alMegrahi, 39, and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, 35. They were accused of planting and detonating the bomb and were believed to be in Libya. The U.S. indictment included 189 counts for killing the 189 U.S. citizens. It also included one count of conspiracy, one count of putting a destructive device on a U.S. civil aircraft resulting in death, one count of destroying a U.S. civil aircraft with an explosive device, and one count of destroying a vehicle in foreign commerce. The United Kingdom issued similar arrest warrants.