The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks Read online

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  The 1980s

  The 1980s were the last hurrah of communist state sponsorship, and concomitantly, of the European Left, many of whom died, were detained, stayed in jail, stayed in hiding, or renounced terrorism and effectively retired. The end of communist control of Eastern Europe at the end of the decade led to the winnowing away of the European leftist terrorist movement as well. The breakup of the Soviet empire left The Left with few revolutionary regimes to serve as role models—few saw Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, or China as saviors of the Marxist revolution, with China moving economically, if not declaratively, toward aggressive capitalism.

  The leftists were replaced in the next decade by al Qaeda, whose antecedents arrived in 1981 with the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat. The al-Gama’at al-Islamiyyah assassins later melded with al Qaeda at the behest of Gama’at leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri later became Osama bin Laden’s deputy and then his successor following his death.

  The key focus of Western government responses to terrorism in the 1980s was the debate over the extent of Soviet and satellite assistance given to terrorists. Radical Middle Eastern regimes were also in the conversation over how to stop terrorism by stopping patron state support. The bombing of La Belle disco, although not particularly bloody, led the United States to use its military might to retaliate. The air raid on Tripoli did not dent Mu’ammar Qadhafi’s willingness to attack Western targets, however, and just over two years later, Libyan-sponsored bombers struck against Pan Am 103 and a year later, a French Union des Transports Aériens (UTA) flight.

  Successes by governments against hijackings and barricade-and-hostage operations led terrorists to again shift tactics. Hijackings went down in part because countries revamped airline security after the United States publicized the names of international airports that were inadequate in their antiterrorist security measures. The worst in the 1980s tended to be attacks that caused dozens of deaths, usually involving methods of transportation, including planes, trains, and ships, with the occasional diplomatic or official facility included. Pressure against state support to some terrorist groups led them to coordinate operations with each other, as seen with Direct Action, the Combatant Communist Cells, and the Italian Red Brigades in the middle of the decade.

  While many of the worst involved multiple deaths, of particular note for the decade is that deaths and injuries from all terrorist attacks had outrun the body counts of previous decades. The more spectacular terrorism events appeared to have a trickle-down effect on “normal” attacks.

  August 2, 1980

  Bologna Train Bombing

  Overview: Separatist, left-wing, and Palestinian terrorists received the bulk of media attention and conducted most of the terrorist attacks in the 1980s. In Italy, the Red Brigades, Communist Fighting Cells, Organized Communist Movement, and like-minded revolutionaries were responsible for thousands of low-level attacks. Right-wing terrorists were not silent, just not as prolific in explosives and media ink. That said, one of the most devastating attacks in all Europe was conducted by a right-wing Italian group at the beginning of the 1980s, presaging mass casualty train attacks in following decades by al Qaeda and Indian groups.

  Incident: On August 2, 1980, a bomb containing 200 pounds of TNT exploded in the crowded waiting rooms and restaurant of Bologna, Italy’s main rail station, killing 84 and injuring more than 400 people. Most of the victims of the 10:25 a.m. blast were Italians. The bodies of a Japanese man and a French woman were also found in the rubble. Two American brothers were injured. Callers claimed the Red Brigades were responsible, but later calls denied the charge. The Organized Communist Movement also denied credit. Another caller said the neofascist Armed Revolutionary Nuclei (Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, NAR) set the bomb in retaliation for a Bologna judge’s decision that morning to try eight people for the August 4, 1974, bombing of a passenger train inside a tunnel between Bologna and Florence, which killed 12 and injured 35. Police suggested that the crash of the Italian domestic airlines DC-9 in the Tyrhenian Sea on June 27, 1980, may have been caused by a rightist bomb, as was claimed in the same phone call. All 81 on board the flight died.

  On August 4, 1980, French police arrested Marco Affatigato, 24, an Italian neofascist. He was extradited on September 5, 1980. He had been wanted by Rome since 1978 and had been sentenced in absentia the previous month by a Pisa court to three and a half years for helping Mario Tuti, one of the train bombers, escape from prison. (Tuti was recaptured.)

  On August 16, 1980, an arrest warrant was issued against neo-Nazi Luca de Orazi, 17, who was charged with subversion. On August 29, 1980, police raids in Rome and two other cities netted a dozen suspects. Warrants for 16 others were issued. On October 11, 1982, Bolivia expelled to Italy Pier Luigi Tagliari.

  On February 17, 1983, Spain arrested seven people suspected of being involved in the Bologna bombing and the bombing of a Paris synagogue.

  On December 12, 1985, Bologna magistrates issued warrants for 16 people. Included were three former chiefs of the Italian Intelligence and Military Security Service (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare, SISMI): Gen. Pietro Musumeci, former assistant director; Col. Giuseppe Belmonte; and Francesco Pazienza, currently imprisoned in the United States. A warrant was also issued for Licio Gelli, the head of the underground P-2 Masonic Lodge. Gelli, who allegedly was involved in tax frauds and financial scandals that brought down the Christian Democratic government in 1982, escaped from a Swiss prison in 1983. The three service chiefs were sentenced to heavy prison terms in July 1984 in connection with illicit SISMI activities on charges of conspiracy, embezzlement, arms and explosives infringements, and “interference in magistrates’ investigations.” Police arrested Professor Fabio de Felice, who was believed to be the right-wing terrorist leader who organized the bombing. Others charged with “complicity in a massacre and forming an armed gang” included Paolo Signorelli, leader of the NAR, Italy’s principal right-wing terrorist group; Massimiliano Facchini; and Stefano Delle Chiaie, sought abroad for the past 15 years. Some of those charged were already serving prison sentences, including Valerio Fioravanti and Francesca Mambro, who had been recently married in prison.

  On July 11, 1988, a Bologna court sentenced Valerio Fioranvanti, Mambro, Facchini, and Sergio Picciafuoco, all members of extreme rightist groups, to life sentences for setting off the bomb. Gelli was acquitted of the charge of masterminding the attack for lack of evidence. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail on charges of trying to throw investigators off the track, as were Pazienza and ex-SISMI officers Gen. Musumeci and Col. Belmonte. The court then reduced the sentences by five years for Gelli and three for the other trio. Right-wing extremists Delle Chiaie, Facchini, and Signorelli were acquitted of subversion charges for lack of evidence.

  On July 13, 1988, the neofascist group Comrades in Jail bombed central Rome’s Piazza Independenza near the central train station, injuring Emilio Manni, 46, a sanitation worker who was emptying the bin in which the bomb was placed inside a Coca-Cola can.

  On May 15, 1989, the British government announced that it had no reason to expel Roberto Fiore, Marcello de Angelis, Massimo Morzello, and Stefano Tiraboschi, all members of the neofascist Third Position (Terza Posizione), who were sentenced in absentia by an Italian court on charges of participation in an armed gang. They were also suspected of involvement in the Bologna bombing.

  On July 19, 1990, the Bologna assizes appeals court overturned four of the life sentences. Cleared of any involvement in carrying out the bombing were neofascists Fioravanti, Mambro, Facchini, and Picciafuoco, who were all sentenced to life in the first trial. Gelli, 71, and former Secret Service agent Pazienza were both acquitted of slander and planting false evidence to mislead investigators. Former SISMI officials Gen. Musumeci and Col. Belmonte saw their 10-year sentences for subversion dropped. The court also reduced the sentences for armed insurrection against Fioravanti to 13 years, Mambro to 12 years, Gilberto Cavallini
to 11 years, and Egidio Giuliani to 8 years. Others cleared by the ruling included Signorelli, who was up for a life sentence, and Roberto Rinani. For the appeals court, the act of association for subversion did not exist and thus cleared of all charges Gelli, Musumeci, Belmonte, and fascist extremists Delle Chiaie, Paolo Tilgher, Marco Ballan, and Maurizio Giorgi.

  On April 13, 1993, shortly after midnight, Interpol agents arrested Italian right-wing terrorist Augusto Caucci, 42, in an apartment at 2400 Sarmiento Street in the Once District of Buenos Aires. He was charged with involvement in the attack at the Bologna rail road station. He was believed to be an explosives expert. He had lived in Argentina for a decade.

  October 6, 1981

  Egyptian President Anwar Sadat Assassination

  Overview: Egyptian president Mohammed Anwar al-Sadat’s signing of a peace accord with Israel made him anathema to radical Arabs across the Middle East and in Egypt. Numerous groups denounced the treaty and Sadat personally. Ayman al-Zawahiri, who three decades later rose to the leadership of al Qaeda, led a fledgling band of Islamist militants in opposition to Sadat’s lean to the West and Western political and cultural touchstones. Recruiting coreligionists across a wide spectrum of Egyptian society, including the armed forces, the radicals were able to plot a successful assassination of a Nobel Peace Prize winner. A crack down on the oppositionists by Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, was soon in coming, but the group continued its string of antiregime attacks for decades to come. Mubarak ruled the country for another 30 years before his ouster by the Arab “street” in the Arab Spring of 2011.

  Incident: On October 6, 1981, at about 12:40 P.M., Egyptian president Sadat was assassinated in a hail of automatic rifle fire and grenade explosions as he stood in review of a military parade in Nasr City celebrating Egypt’s crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973. At least 9 others, including government officials and foreign diplomats, were killed, and 38 others injured.

  While the attention of those in the reviewing stand was diverted by a spectacular air show of overflying Mirages, a Soviet truck hauling a new South Korean–manufactured field artillery piece came to a stop parallel to the stand, 15 yards away. The assassination team forced the driver to stop. Lt. Khaled Ahmed Shawki Islambouli (also identified as 2nd Lt. Khaled Attallah) led the assassins off the truck. He had given his assigned men a vacation and recruited in their place two civilians with past military service and an officer on inactive reserve. The group advanced on the reviewing stand unmolested by the bodyguards, who ran for cover. The terrorists fired at almost point-blank range, hitting Sadat with 28 bullets. Sadat was rushed onto a helicopter, still alive, but pronounced dead at 3:00 P.M. Three of the terrorists were reported killed at the scene, while other media reports said three were captured.

  The press reported that the dead included chief chamberlain Hassan Allam; Sadat’s official photographer Mohamed Rashwan; an Omani battalion commander; Bishop Samuel, member of the caretaker Papal Council of the Coptic Orthodox Church; Samir Hilmi, chairman of the Central Accounts Administration; Army Chief of Staff Gen. ‘Abd Rabb an-Nabi Hafiz; a security guard; and two unidentified persons.

  The wounded included the North Korean ambassador, presidential assistant Sayyid Mar’I, Sadat’s private secretary Fawzi Abdel Hafez, Belgian ambassador Claude Ruelle, Irish defense minister James Tully, Egyptian defense minister Abdel Hamlim Abu Ghazala, CBS News correspondent Mitchell Krauss, several other Egyptians, U.S. Air Force Capt. Christopher Ryan, U.S. Marines Maj. Gerald R. Agenbroad, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Charles D. Loney, and Richard McCleskey, a Raytheon employee. Vice President Mubarak, who succeeded Sadat and was seated next to him, was uninjured, despite the assassins’ plans to mount a coup by killing the members of the administration seated at the reviewing stand. Maj. Gen. Mahmoud Masri, commander of the Republican Bodyguard, claimed that 12 members of his staff were wounded. He was unable to explain why the security forces turned and ran during the attack, nor how civilians snuck onto the trucks with live ammunition, which was not to be issued for the parade.

  The next day, 54 policemen were killed and more than 100 wounded in clashes with Muslim fundamentalists in Asyut after the group launched coordinated attacks from 10 cars at dawn against two police stations, security headquarters, and a police unit guarding a mosque. Six militants died and four were wounded. The extremists were part of a group that had seen 1,500 of their number arrested the previous month by Sadat in an anti-insurgent move against al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya.

  On October 17, 1981, investigators linked Lt. Col. Abu Abdel Latif Zomor, who was captured in a gun battle between police and Muslim extremists at the Giza pyramids, with the attack. His brother and three others were also arrested.

  One of the assassins, a major, had a brother who had been arrested in the September 1981 crack down.

  The group Takfir wa Hijra (Repentant and Holy Flight) was blamed, as was Libyan leader Qadhafi and the Muslim Brotherhood. In Beirut, the exiled Egyptian opposition group known variously as the Independent Organization for the Liberation of Egypt and the Rejection Front for the Liberation of Arab Egypt, headquartered in Tripoli, Libya (and, according to the Egyptian press, given $3 million by Qadhafi), claimed credit. The group was headed by Saadeddin Shazli, a former Egyptian general who was chief of staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces between 1971 and 1973 and who subsequently broke with Sadat.

  The assassins admitted that the ammunition had been purchased in the Upper Nile town of Deshna, 325 miles south of Cairo.

  Police later arrested 356 Muslims affiliated with the terrorist organization that killed Sadat.

  On November 12, 1981, twenty-four people were indicted for the murder. Sadat’s assassins were listed as Lt. Islambouli, the commander of the artillery squad; Atta Tayem Hamida Rahim, an engineer and former reserve officer in the Egyptian Air Defense Command; Sgt. Hussein Abbas Mohammed, a member of the Home Guard; and Abdel Halim Abdel Salim Abdel Ali, a stationery store owner. Abdel Salam Farag, 27, a Cairo engineer and civilian leader of the El Jihad terrorist group, was charged with “complicity and instigation” for publishing the book Absent Duty, of which only 500 copies have been printed and which served as the assassins’ ideological guide. A furniture dealer, three university students, and an 18-year-old high school student were accused of conspiracy. A blind mullah, Sheikh Omar Ahmed Abdel Rahman, 43, a theology professor from Cairo’s Al-Azhar University who had recently taught at Asyut, was also indicted for saying “It is God’s will,” when told of the assassination plot. Rahman later figured prominently in the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City and a plot to bomb other New York City landmarks in 1993.

  On March 6, 1982, chief judge Maj. Gen. Samir Fadel Attia announced that the 3-man military court had convicted and sentenced 22 of the 24 defendants. The blind sheikh was acquitted. Lt. Col. Zomor, 35, a member of the army’s intelligence service, and his student brother, Tariq Zomor, were sentenced to life. Defendant Mohammed Salamouni read a statement in English, saying “Sadat made of himself the last pharaoh in our country. He made of himself the last shah. Sadat killed himself by his behavior here in Egypt.” At the noisy trial, the defendants—who were eventually caged for their outbursts—claimed that they had been tortured while in prison. Ignoring all clemency appeals, President Mubarak accepted the death sentences for the four assassins and Farag. On April 15, 1982, Lt. Khaled Ahmed Shawki Islambouli, 24, and Sgt. Hussein Abbas Mohammed, 28, were killed by a firing squad, while the three civilians were hanged.

  On July 17, 1988, three members of the Jihad Organization who were serving life sentences for the assassination escaped from Turrah prison at dawn after attacking two prison guards. The trio were identified as Khamis Muhammad Musallam, Muhammad Mahmud Salih al-Aswani, and ‘Isamal-Din Muhammad Kamal al-Qamari. The interior ministry offered a large financial reward. On July 25, 1988, Egyptian police fatally shot Qamari in a gun battle in the Shobra district of Cairo. Two policemen were wounded when Qamari fired a submachine gun and threw t
wo grenades at the police, allowing the two other fugitives to escape. Police found grenades and explosives at their hideout, owned by another Muslim fundamentalist.

  On November 5, 1993, Montasser Zayyat, defense lawyer for several militant Muslims standing trial in military courts, said in an interview that Switzerland had granted political asylum to Egyptian militant leader Zawahiri, accused by Egypt of relaunching the Vanguards of Conquest (New Jihad) group that assassinated President Sadat. Zayyat said his client applied for asylum six months earlier, and it was granted the previous week. Corinne Goetschel, a Swiss justice ministry spokeswoman, told the press, “This is not true. There is no one of that name who has applied for political asylum nor been granted political asylum in Switzerland.” She did not know whether Zawahiri had used another name in such a request. Zawahiri served three years in jail in connection with Sadat’s murder. He had no other legal charges pending against him in Egypt.

  On February 22, 1994, Copenhagen’s Politiken ran an article on Tal’at Fu’ad Qassim, one of the leaders of the organization that killed Sadat and who still conducted terrorist attacks in Egypt. Qassim was identified as instigating terrorist attacks against Danish firms and Danish tourists in Egypt from his home in the Copenhagen area. He was under a death sentence for his part in the Sadat case. In 1981, he was arrested as a leader of the banned Holy War ( Jihad). In 1989, he escaped while being moved with other prisoners. Traveling through the Sudan and Peshawar, Pakistan, he reached Afghanistan, where he became one of the leaders of the Muslim fundamentalist volunteers aiding the mujahideen in fighting the Russians. Egypt had requested his extradition, but Qassim was given asylum from the death sentence by Denmark. He was known for his links to al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya. The Egyptian newspaper al-Ahali interviewed him, noting that he threatened foreign tourists and investments in Egypt, including Danish firms operating in Egypt and the 2,000 Danish tourists who holiday there each year. Qassim told the paper, “Tourism is a nonIslamic source of income which helps keep the present government in power, and foreigners have been warned to stay away from Egypt.”