Imad Mughniyya

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Imad Mughniyya ( Arabic عماد فايز مغنية, DMG ʿImād Fāyiz Muġniyya ; * December 7, 1962 in Tair Dibba in Lebanon , also Imad Mugnijeh ; † February 12, 2008 in Damascus , Syria ) was a senior member of the intelligence service of the Lebanese organization Hezbollah . Alternatively, he was seen as the head of the security unit and co-founder of Hezbollah. He was Shiite and used the pseudonym Hajj Radwan (حج رضوان, DMG Ḥaǧǧ Raḍwān ). Mughniyya was included on the Council of the European Union's list of terrorists.

Life

Before joining Hezbollah, he was a teenager in Force 17 , Fatah's elite unit, in the 1970s . As a result, Mughniyya was involved in numerous terrorist attacks in the 1980s and 1990s, mainly against US and Israeli targets.

These include the April 18, 1983 bomb attack on the US embassy in Beirut , Lebanon, in which 63 people were killed. Mughniyya is charged with participating in the simultaneous car bomb attacks on French paratroopers and US Marines barracks on October 23, 1983 . 58 French soldiers and 241 US Marines were killed in the attacks. Almost a year later, on September 20, 1984, he was accused of attacking an outbuilding of the US embassy. The US charged him with hijacking TWA 847 on June 14, 1985, which killed a US Marine. He has also been linked to many Western kidnappings in Beirut in the 1980s. Some of these people were later killed, including CIA agent William F. Buckley . All others were released at different times, the last one in 1991.

The Israeli secret service also made him responsible for the kidnapping of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev , two Israeli soldiers, in summer 2006, which is given as the reason for the 2006 Lebanon war .

The German journalist Bruno Schirra describes Mughniyya in detail in his book Iran - Sprengstoff für Europa as the “mastermind of Shiite terrorism”. The FBI listed him as the 22 most wanted terrorists. $ 25 million was put on his head - dead or alive. “No one killed more Jews in terrorist attacks after World War II than Imad Mughniyya,” Schirra quotes a Western Hezbollah expert.

Links to al-Qaeda

It became known through Mughniyya that he also had contacts with the al-Qaeda network. Ali Muhammad , an al-Qaeda official, said he had arranged a meeting between Mughniyya and al-Qaeda officials in 1993. Even later there were various speculations about secret meetings. A demonstrable collaboration between the Sunni terrorist organization al-Qaeda and the hostile Shiite Hezbollah was not made public.

death

On February 12, 2008, Mughniyya was killed in a car bomb attack in Damascus, initiated by the CIA in collaboration with the Mossad .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Spiegel Online : “That was excellent work” , February 13, 2008.
  2. DEBKAfile: US intelligence director: "Remember, he's a shia and often his targets could be Sunni as well as against Israel." ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. March 18, 2008. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.debka.com
  3. Official Journal No. L 340 of 24/12/2003 of the Council of the European Union on Combating Terrorism.
  4. Reuters : Hezbollah military chief killed in attack in Syria  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. February 13, 2008.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / de.today.reuters.com  
  5. in: Iran - Sprengstoff für Europa , Ullstein-Verlah 2007, p. 180.
  6. Insight Magazine: Kenneth R. Timmerman: "Likely Mastermind Of Tower Attacks" December 31, 2001.
  7. Al-Qaeda - Secret meeting with Hamas and Hezbollah? , SPIEGEL ONLINE, May 22, 2002, accessed October 20, 2017
  8. ^ [1] , Adam Goldman, Ellen Nakashima, January 30, 2015, The Washington Post , accessed October 20, 2017
  9. How the CIA and Mossad teamed up to kill Hezbollah's 'father of smoke' , Rob Crilly, January 31, 2015, The Daily Telegraph , accessed October 20, 2017
  10. “CIA-Mossad operation killed Hezbollah figure” , January 31, 2015, Al-Jazeera , (English), accessed October 20, 2017