Did Israel's Mossad Finally Catch Up With Terrorist Abu Nidal?

News Alert!
Posted Aug. 26, 2002
By Kenneth R. Timmerman and Wade-Hahn Chan

Did Israel's Mossad Finally Catch Up With Terrorist Abu Nidal?

One gone, one to go. Palestinian sources in Ramallah have announced the death by suicide of Abu Nidal, the 65-year-old arch terrorist who murdered more than 300 people and wounded another 600, according to the State Department. His body was found at his Baghdad home "riddled with bullets," the reports said. While suicide thus seems unlikely, his death after several years of inactivity begs the question: Who killed him?

For much of the 1970s and 1980s, Nidal's Palestinian Revolutionary Council presented itself as an alternative to Yasser Arafat, whom Nidal accused of being too willing to compromise with Israel. But often Nidal appeared to operate as Arafat's alter ego. Thus, on June 2, 1982, a Nidal hit team shot Israeli ambassador Shlomo Argov in the head as he was leaving a dinner at London's Dorchester Hotel, providing the pretext for Israel's ill-fated 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Arafat had been building up huge stockpiles of conventional weapons (tanks, rocket launchers, air-defense systems and even radar) in gigantic underground complexes constructed with Soviet help and appeared to be seeking an armed confrontation with the Israelis.

After the invasion, Nidal launched a series of attacks on Jews across Europe. A machine-gun attack on the rue des Rosiers in Paris left six persons dead and 22 wounded on Sept. 8, 1982. In December 1985, his killers machine-gunned the El Al ticket counters at the Rome and Vienna airports, killing 18 and wounding more than 100 others. A few months later, they attacked a synagogue in Istanbul.

Few intelligence services or terrorist groups have been able to operate in Baghdad where Nidal was killed. Iran's Ministry of Information and Security, which regularly assassinates Iranian dissidents in Baghdad, reportedly has taken some responsibility but seems to lack a motive. So does its archenemy, the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran, a terrorist group trained and equipped by Saddam. Various Iraqi opposition groups have tried to operate in Baghdad, with varying degrees of success, but they too lack a motive.

Israel has elevated retribution to state policy. Through the years, Israel's Mossad has attempted to infiltrate Nidal's group. During the early 1990s, it sparked an internal feud that decimated the ranks of Nidal's organization. Regardless of what the Iraqis have been reporting to cover up whatever happened, if a Mossad team finally caught up with Nidal in Baghdad then fasten your seat belts. It shows that Mossad is back after a series of stunning reverses in recent years and now is capable of operating in Baghdad's extremely hostile environment. If so, Saddam may be next on its list.