The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks Read online

  On August 1, 1981, Daoud was hit by five bullets fired in the evening in the Opera coffeehouse of Warsaw’s Victoria International Hotel. On May 3, 1999, he was turned away at Paris’s Orly Airport when he tried to enter France to promote his new autobiography. He was now a member of the Palestine National Council and a Ramallah attorney. He acknowledged in the book his role in the Munich attack. On June 13, 1999, Israel banned him from entering the West Bank. The German government had issued a warrant for his arrest the previous week. He reportedly died of kidney failure at age 73 on July 3, 2010 in Damascus, Syria.

  In early November 1995, relatives of 11 Israeli athletes and officials killed in the attack filed a $26 million lawsuit against the city of Munich, the state of Bavaria, and the Federal Republic of Germany. In rejecting the claim, a Munich court ruled that the statute of limitations had expired in 1977. The families’ attorney said that he planned to appeal, because it was impossible to make a case earlier as police files regarding the incident were classified until 1992. Relatives of the Israelis were paid $1 million in a check issued in 1974 by the Red Cross. Families of the Israeli Olympics athletes murdered by Black September terrorists accepted a $2.98 million compensation package on September 6, 2002.

  May 15, 1974

  Ma'alot Massacre

  Overview: Attacks by various Palestinian terrorist groups against Israeli civilians became commonplace after the formation of Fatah and various Palestinian Marxist groups. They were later succeeded in the 1990s and 2000s by Hizballah and Hamas, which specialized in suicide bombings. Groups such as the PFLP and its splinters, including the PFLP-Special Operations and PFLP-GC, and the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), while engaging in high-risk operations, usually took hostages with the intention of trading them for imprisoned colleagues and political concessions. They generally were rebuffed, but their operational aim was to kill a few, take hostage a few, and get out alive to fight again. The Ma’alot operation ratcheted up the terror quotient beyond the simple bombings and shootings, putting children at risk by attacking a school—an operation that was mimicked three decades later by Chechen terrorists in Russia. Publicity around the world regarding the attack focused global attention on the Palestinian issue, giving the terrorists exactly what they sought.

  Incident: On May 15, 1974, three members of the PDFLP crossed the Lebanese border into Israel, where they attacked a van bringing Arab women home from work, killing two and injuring one. They then entered the town of Ma’alot, bursting into the apartment of Yosef Cohen, killing three of the family members. A deaf-mute child escaped because he had hidden and did not make a sound. The neighbors sounded an alarm, but there were no troops or effective police forces available to respond in the small border town. An officer in a neighboring city attributed the cry for help as hysteria and ignored it. The terrorists moved on to a nearby school, where they shot a janitor and then herded more than 90 school children from their dormitories, kicking and clubbing them. Three adults and 17 children escaped through windows.

  Later that morning, the commandos sent out a female hostage with the demand for the release of 23 Arab prisoners by 6:00 P.M. They demanded that the prisoners go to Damascus, Syria, or Cyprus with French ambassador to Israel Francis Hure and Red Cross representatives, or they would blow up the school. Israeli officials said they agreed to the demands. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Mordechai Gur arrived to direct rescue operations. The terrorists demanded that Hure and Romanian ambassador Ion Covaci act as mediators. They were to give the terrorists a code word indicating that the prisoners had arrived, at which time half the hostages would be released. The terrorists planned to fly to an Arab capital, preferably Damascus, with Covaci and the rest of the hostages. After the terrorists refused to extend their deadline, the Israelis stormed the building.

  Apparently the prisoners, including surviving Lod Airport JRA attacker Kozo Okamoto, had been taken out of their cells in anticipation of the hostage trade when the negotiations broke down. The Israelis decided to attack within half an hour of the deadline. One terrorist was shot as he ran to detonate an explosive, and the two others fired on the children before they died, machine guns in hand. Sixteen of the children were killed immediately, and 5 of the 70 injured children died later. One of the Israeli commandos also was killed in the raid. Premier Golda Meir promised revenge for the attack, and on May 16, 1974, Israeli jets attacked guerrilla camps at Ein el Halweh and Nabatieh in southern Lebanon. Some reports said that 21 were killed and 134 wounded. Later PDFLP leader Naif Hawatmeh claimed that the raid was designed to prevent peace negotiations, which would return the West Bank of the Jordan to the Kingdom of Jordan.

  December 21, 1975

  Vienna OPEC Hostage-Taking

  Overview: Before the rise to prominence of Osama bin Laden, the most famous international terrorist was a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member, Illich Ramirez Sanchez, a Venezuelan known popularly as Carlos the Jackal (named after the assassin in Fredric Forsythe’s The Day of the Jackal). Carlos developed contacts among the world’s major leftist and Palestinian terrorist groups, offering his services to all comers. He was responsible for a laundry list of high-profile attacks throughout Europe, including bombings and assassinations. His signature attack came against the ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), when he led a diverse band of European and Palestinian terrorists in a barricade-and-hostage siege. A worldwide manhunt for Carlos ended in 1994, when he was detained in the Sudan. As of 2013, he was serving his sentence in a French jail.

  Incident: On December 21, 1975, six members of the Arm of the Arab Revolution (AAR), believed to be a cover term for the PFLP, attacked a ministerial meeting of the OPEC in Vienna, Austria, seizing 70 hostages, including 11 oil ministers. In the attack and subsequent shoot-out with police, three people were killed and eight injured, including one of the terrorists. The group was led by the famed Venezuelan terrorist, Illich Ramirez Sanchez, alias Carlos the Jackal. According to various popular accounts, although the PLFP-Habash wing denied any connection to the attack, planning was initially engaged in by Carlos and Wadi Haddad of the PFLP. Participants included Hans-Joachim Klein, a Movement 2 June member (a friend of Hanna Elise Krabbe, a Socialist Patients’ Collective member who had been involved in the takeover of the West German facility in Sweden), and a woman identified as Gabriele Krocher-Tiedemann, who had been released in the February 27, 1975, kidnapping of Peter Lorenz. Other sources claimed that the woman was Klein’s last-known girlfriend, Mechthild Rogali. The group was armed with Beretta model 12 machine pistols, Chinese grenades, plastic explosives, fuse wires, batteries, and detonators and also carried vitamin C tablets and amphetamines to aid them in a siege operation. The identity of three other members of the attack force is less clear, with most accounts making them out to be Palestinians.

  In the initial attack, the group members ran up the stairs toward the meeting hall where the OPEC conference was in session. The only security constituted two guards looking forward to retirement, Inspectors Josef Janda and Anton Tichler. Tichler, an Austrian, was killed in the gunfire, and Janda was taken hostage by the group. He managed to get to a phone and relayed a message to his headquarters that OPEC was under attack. The second individual killed was Ali Hassan Khafali, a security officer with the Iraqi delegation, who attempted to surprise Carlos and seize his carbine. He was killed by the woman. The third killed was Yousef Ismirli, a Libyan economist who wrestled with Carlos for control of his weapon and was shot dead by the terrorist. One of the rounds passed through Ismirli and wounded a member of the Kuwaiti delegation in the right arm. By this time, the Austrian security police had sent in reinforcements, and in a gun duel with Inspector Kurt Leopolder, Klein was shot in the stomach. He was taken out of the building on a stretcher, but later returned after demands made by the other terrorists. One of the RGD-5 grenades exploded during the attack, killing no one.

 
The terrorists rounded up their hostages and barricaded themselves in the conference room, where they discovered that they held 11 ministers: Delaid Abdesselam of Algeria, Jaime Duenas-Villavicencio of Ecuador, Edouard Alexis M’Bouy-Boutzit of Gabon, Lt. Gen. Dr. Ibnu Sutowo of Indonesia, Dr. Jamshid Amouzegar of Iran, Tayeh Abdul-Karim of Iraq, Abdul Mutalib Al-Kazemi of Kuwait, Ezzedin Ali Mabruk of Libya, Dr. M. T. Akobo of Nigeria, Ahmed Zaki Yamani of Saudi Arabia, and Dr. Valentin Hernandez-Acosta of Venezuela. Some reports claim that the original plans were for the assassinations of Yamani and Amouzegar, two of the most important participants in the OPEC meeting, representing countries in disagreement with the Rejection Front of the Palestinian Movement. During the beginning of the 36-hour siege, the hostages were separated into four groups. The Libyans, Algerians, Iraqis, Kuwaitis, and Palestinian OPEC employees were considered friends. Neutrals included citizens of Gabon, Nigeria, Indonesia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Austrians were placed separately; the rest were considered enemies. The terrorists selected Griselda Carey, the British secretary of Chief M. O. Feyide, the Nigerian OPEC secretary general, to carry their demands to the Austrians. The group’s demands included the return of Klein, the publication of a political manifesto over Austrian radio and television, a bus to take them to the airport where a DC-9 with three crew was to be waiting, a rope, scissors, and adhesive tape. The manifesto, translated from the French and published by the news media, read:

  Reaffirmation of the 3 fundamentals of the 1976 Khartoum Arab summit: no treaty with, no negotiations with, and no recognition of the state of Zionist aggression. Denunciation of all compromise and all political plans aimed at destroying this anti-capitulation plan and aimed at giving tacit or explicit legality to aggression from any part of the Arab Palestinian land. In the light of this, condemnation of the treacherous agreements over the Sinai and the reopening of the Suez Canal to Zionist trading, with a claim that they be dropped, to allow the heroic Egyptian Arab Army to pursue its victories of the October war by leading a war of total liberation with the armies of the north-east front. Condemnation of attempts to lead Arab states and the Palestine resistance to the negotiating table, and condemnation of treaties and recognition in Geneva, or any other place, of other capitulation formulas. Formation of the north-east front with Syria, Iraq, and the Palestine resistance on the basis of refusal to compromise, and reinforcement of the war of total liberation. The reawakening of the process of Arab unification, whose realization is a fundamental condition for national salvation, by moves towards unification among Arab states who partner each other geographically and politically. The declaration of the principle of full sovereignty over “our” petroleum and financial wealth through nationalization of petroleum monopolies and the adoption of a national petroleum and financial policy which will enable the Arab people to use its resources for its development, its progress, the safeguard of its national interests and the strengthening of its sovereignty alongside the friendly people of the Third World so they can emerge from their economic stagnation, on condition that priority be given to financing the confrontation countries and the Palestinian resistance. Declaration of clear position over the dramatic conflict taking place in Lebanon by condemning and opposing the denominational reactionary-American plot, and the effective equipment and moral support for the Lebanese national Arab forces and the Palestinian resistance who are defending Lebanon and its national Arab adherence.

  The Kreisky government agreed to broadcast the manifesto.

  During the negotiations, Iraqi chargé d’affaires Riyadh Al-Azzawi served as mediator. Carlos’s first choice, the Libyan ambassador, was in Budapest, Hungary, at the time of the attack. The Iraqi obtained the release of several hostages, including an Austrian secretary who had become hysterical, the injured Kuwaiti, and an English interpreter employed by the Algerian oil minister. Later, seven female hostages were allowed to leave to do their Christmas shopping.

  A possible rescue attempt failed when the car of two armed Israelis crashed outside the building.

  Despite surrounding the building with troops, the Austrian government soon gave in to the terrorists’ demands for a flight out of the country. They also granted the demand that a doctor travel with Klein and recruited Dr. Wiriya Rawenduzy, a Kurd who had obtained Austrian citizenship. Forty-two of the hostages, none of them Austrians, were herded onto the DC-9 piloted by Capt. Manfred Pollack and Otto Herold. The plane flew first to Algiers Dar El Beida Airport, where Klein was taken to a hospital in a Red Crescent ambulance. (Later reports claimed that he was transferred to a Libyan hospital, and had been paid £100,000 by Libya’s Col. Mu’ammar Qadhafi for his participation in the operation.) The neutrals were also allowed off the plane. Bruno Kreisky stated that Carlos had agreed to allow all hostages off in Algeria, but the terrorists instructed the pilot to fly on to Tripoli, Libya, and Baghdad, Iraq. The plane flew to Tripoli, where the terrorists instructed air traffic control to have Libyan prime minister Maj. Abdul Salam Ahmed Jalloud ready to meet them. Carlos requested a larger plane but was not given one. Hostages from Saudi Arabia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Algeria, and Libya were released.

  Some details of the terrorists’ demands are unconfirmed. Some reported that they demanded a large ransom from Saudi Arabia and Iran for the release of their oil ministers. On December 22, 1975, at midnight, the King phoned the Shah from Amman about the situation. An hour later, a Zurich banker was phoned by the Iranian embassy in Geneva and told to transfer an undisclosed sum of money to an Aden bank. A PFLP man in London months later said the sum was $5 million. In Beirut, Fatah sympathizers said it was 10 times that and that Haddad, Habash, and Carlos received much of it (he recouped perhaps $2 million). Three months later, Chancellor Kreisky was reported to have confirmed the ransom tale.

  After landing rights were refused in Tunis, the plane flew back to Algiers. Apparently after receiving a code word from Algerian foreign minister Abdel Aziz Bouteflika that Haddad had received the money, the terrorists surrendered and released the hostages. Reporters claimed that the terrorists did not appear to have been arrested, and an Austrian government extradition request was refused on the grounds that no treaty existed between the two countries.

  Gabriele Krocher-Tiedemann was captured after a shoot-out with Swiss police on December 20, 1977. A warrant was handed down by the Vienna criminal court on December 23, 1975, for shooting an Austrian policeman at point-blank range during the OPEC attack. She was suspected of involvement in the Entebbe hijacking of June 27, 1976. In October 1983, Carlos threatened to kill Bonn interior minister Friedrich Zimmermann if authorities prosecuted her for her role in the 1975 OPEC attack; she was serving 15 years in Switzerland for seriously wounding two customs officers. On December 18, 1987, Swiss authorities extradited her to West Germany where she was to serve a six-year sentence and answer charges regarding the OPEC attack. In Switzerland she had been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

  On September 8, 1998, French police raided the only bar in SaintHonorine-lal-Guillaume, a Normandy village, and arrested Klein, 50. Klein, living under an assumed name, was a nighttime regular. Townspeople thought “Dick” was a German journalist. He surrendered quietly and was unarmed. After the terrorists fled to Algeria with 35 hostages, Klein was later spotted in Yemen, Libya, and Algeria. In 1978, he told Der Spiegel magazine that he had renounced terrorism. Frankfurt prosecutors determined in 1997 that he spent some of his time in France. On February 15, 2001, Klein was found guilty of murder in the OPEC attack and jailed for nine years by the Frankfurt court. He was paroled in 2003.

  On October 15, 1999, Frankfurt police announced the arrest of Rudolf F., 56, a German suspected of being an accomplice in the case. Further details were not released.

  Carlos was arrested in Sudan on August 14, 1994, and extradited to France. On December 24, 1997, France found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison for three murders in 1975. He converted to Islam while in prison. On December 15, 2011, a Paris court sentenced him to another
life sentence for organizing four attacks in France in 1982 and 1983 that killed 11 and injured more than 140. As of 2013, he remained in prison.

  On November 12, 2013, Sonja Suder, 80, a member of the Revolutionary Cells, was acquitted of a role in the OPEC attack.

  June 27, 1976

  Entebbe

  Overview: Years of giving in to the demands of barricade-and-hostage perpetrators, kidnapers, and hijackers led to increasing frustrations on the part of victimized governments and their citizens who called for tougher measures. Nonnegotiation stances often were not believed credible by terrorists who continued to use these bargaining tactics. A daring and successful Israeli rescue mission into a hostile nation that was directly aiding the terrorists established that governments could indeed get the upper hand and that capitulation need no longer be the default option. Other nations rushed to create their own hostage rescue teams; the Germans’ GSG 9 soon showed that the Israeli success was not just a sui generis victory.

  Incident: On June 27, 1976, Air France flight 139, an A300 Aerospatiale Airbus carrying 257 people, including 12 crew, from Tel Aviv to Paris, was hijacked out of Athens by seven members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In Athens, 56 people boarded, including 14 French, 10 Greeks, 9 Americans, 3 Canadians, 5 New Zealanders, 2 Britons, a Jordanian, a Lebanese, a Cypriot, and a Japanese. The plane first landed in Benghazi, Libya, for refueling. While on the ground, the terrorists allowed a British woman who had been hemorrhaging to deplane. Upon leaving Libya, the plane attempted to land in Sudan, but the government refused. It flew on to Entebbe Airport in Uganda. During the initial seizure, the West German leader of the hijackers announced over the loudspeaker, “This is the Ché Guevara Brigade of the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine. I am your new commandant. This plane is renamed Haifa. You are our prisoners.” The passengers reported that the terrorists attempted to keep their identities secret, referring to each other only by numbers. One passenger, M. Cojot, acted as liaison with the hijackers. Upon landing at Entebbe, the Ugandans provided the hijackers with additional weapons and guarded the hostages while the terrorists left to freshen up. Three additional terrorists joined the original seven.