He who lives by terrorism...
(Filed: 25/08/2002)
Con Coughlin reveals the deadly intrigue that last week led Saddam Hussein to murder Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist who was one of his trusted, and most feared, confidants
T his time there can be no mistake: Abu Nidal is dead. The Palestinian terrorist who, for more than two decades, left a trail of carnage and destruction throughout the Middle East and Europe, has died as he lived, by the gun.
For most of his life Abu Nidal was the archetypal gun for hire, plying his deadly trade for a number of paymasters, most notably for Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
Long before anyone had ever heard of Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'eda, Sabri al-Banna, the Palestinian terrorist who used the nom de guerre Abu Nidal (Father of the Struggle), was the world's most most-wanted man, and his followers constituted the most feared, and brutal, terrorist organisation.
Last week the tables were finally turned when a team of Saddam's gunmen burst into Abu Nidal's Baghdad apartment and shot him dead.
The reason for the shooting, as The Telegraph today reveals, is that Abu Nidal declined Saddam's request to use his considerable expertise to train a number of al-Qa'eda fighters who have taken refuge in northern Iraq since the collapse of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
As with so many aspects of Abu Nidal's life, at first the details surrounding his death were so shrouded in mystery that no one was sure whether he really was dead, or if this was just another of the hoax announcements that had been made in the past to confuse international intelligence organisations.
During the Iran-Iraq war in the early 1980s, for example, when Saddam was trying to win American backing for his war against the ayatollahs, the government-owned Baghdad press reported that Abu Nidal, who had been busy directing his international terrorist network from his office in Baghdad, had died of a heart attack.
A month later, just as the report was starting to acquire credence among intelligence agencies, Libya's Colonel Gaddafi announced that Abu Nidal was alive and living in Tripoli, thereby undermining Saddam's ingenious attempt to wash his hands of the Abu Nidal issue.
A few years ago he was reported to be dying of cancer at an Egyptian hospital but when Egyptian security forces, prompted into action by Western intelligence agencies, raided the hospital, Abu Nidal was nowhere to be seen.
Last week the confusion concerned not so much the fact of his death, but the manner of his passing. Initially the reports emanating from Baghdad said he had died of cancer, which were then updated to suggest that he had committed suicide because he could no longer cope with the effects of his illness.
Meanwhile his supporters in Beirut claimed that he had been murdered by the Iraqis, which in turn prompted Taher Jalil Haboush, the head of Iraqi intelligence, to make an unprecedented public appearance at a press conference, at which he gave what he insisted was the definitive account of Abu Nidal's demise.
Iraqi intelligence agents, said Haboush, had discovered that Abu Nidal had entered the country illegally from Iran. They launched an intensive search of Baghdad but were unable to find him because he kept changing his name and moving apartments.
In the course of their investigations they learnt that Abu Nidal was involved in a plot to assassinate Saddam. Eventually the security agents located his address and went to his apartment to arrest him and take him away for interrogation. Soon after they arrived, Abu Nidal excused himself, went to another room, put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
The shot did not immediately kill him and the Iraqi officers rushed him to a nearby hospital where Abu Nidal later died of his wounds. To prove the point, Haboush produced a photograph of the deceased terrorist lying prone on his hospital bed, blood still oozing from his head.
Given the gruesome reputation of Saddam's interrogation methods, it is perhaps not surprising that Abu Nidal should prefer to take his own life rather than endure the barbarity that is routinely applied to detainees in the "operations room" of Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison complex.
The only problem with Haboush's elaborate account of Abu Nidal's death is that it is almost entirely fictitious, a clumsy attempt by Saddam's rapidly collapsing regime to distance itself from the murder of a man who was once one of Saddam's most trusted, and most feared, confidants.
Certainly the reports currently being analysed by Western security experts paint a very different picture from that provided by Haboush. For example, the suggestion that Abu Nidal had entered Iraq illegally, and that he was living in hiding in Baghdad, is highly misleading.
Abu Nidal and his entourage had been invited to take up residence in Baghdad several months ago on Saddam's personal orders.
Even in his declining years, Abu Nidal always travelled with a number of bodyguards who carried with them large quantities of arms, ammunition and explosives. When they arrived at the Jordanian border they were met by Iraqi intelligence officials who escorted them to Baghdad.
Saddam had facilitated Abu Nidal's return to Baghdad so that he could receive medical treatment for a mild form of skin cancer.
Far from being hidden away at a secret location, Abu Nidal received a VIP welcome, and was treated at the Ibn Sina Hospital in central Baghdad, which is located just 100 yards from Saddam's office at the Presidential Palace.
Access to the hospital is strictly controlled by Saddam's security officials, and Abu Nidal was treated in a neighbouring room to the one specially reserved for Saddam's eldest son, Uday, who narrowly survived an assassination attempt in 1996.
Abu Nidal's treatment did not require full-time admission to hospital and on most days he returned to his apartment in central Baghdad.
According to officials at the Iraqi National Accord, the London-based Iraqi opposition group, Abu Nidal was frequently seen in the company of General Muwafak Ali, a senior officer with Iraq's Mukhabarat intelligence agency, who is responsible for Iraq's relations with Jordan and the Palestinians.
Just nine days before his death, Abu Nidal was spotted visiting a group of Palestinians resident in Baghdad, accompanied by Iraqi intelligence officers.
Saddam's invitation to Abu Nidal to return to Baghdad, however, was by no means altruistic. In the aftermath of September 11 Saddam became one of the principal targets of American President George W. Bush's war on terror.
With the prospect of renewed hostilities between the US and Iraq becoming increasingly imminent, Saddam has been looking at various ways of disrupting Washington's plans.
Iraq's support for Palestinian suicide bombers, for example, is well-documented. By stoking the flames of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Saddam has been trying to divert Western attention from Iraq.
It now appears that Saddam's renewed relationship with Abu Nidal was related to the Iraqi leader's efforts to counter Washington's attempts to depose him. In return for providing Abu Nidal with a safe haven in Baghdad, and providing him with medical treatment, Saddam hoped to persuade the veteran terrorist to reactivate his extensive network of "sleeper" cells in Europe and the Middle East.
During the 20 or more years that his terrorist organisation was active, Abu Nidal demonstrated his organisation's ability to conduct attacks at a wide variety of locations.
During the late 1970s, he waged a murderous campaign against moderate Palestinian leaders, including the murder in 1978 of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's representative in London. In 1982, his group was responsible for the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to London, which was the main reason for Israel's decision to invade Lebanon a few days later to attack Palestinian terror groups.
In the mid-1980s, after he shifted his allegiance from Saddam to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Abu Nidal undertook some of his most spectacular terrorist attacks, such as the 1985 bombing of the Israeli airline El Al's ticket desks at Rome and Vienna airports.
He was also responsible for murdering two British diplomats in Athens and Bombay, and the murder of British journalist Alec Collett, who was hanged in Lebanon. One of his aides last week claimed that in private he had even claimed responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270 people.
In recent years Abu Nidal's network had lain dormant after he apparently became disillusioned with the ineffectiveness of his terror tactics. According to Arab diplomats, he wanted to establish his credentials as a serious political figure in the Palestinian movement, positioning himself as a viable alternative to the PLO leader Yasser Arafat.
Saddam, however, had other plans. He wanted Abu Nidal to reactivate his "sleeper" cells and to use his agents to conduct a new wave of terror attacks. In particular he wanted Abu Nidal to attack targets in Jordan and Turkey, which he hoped would destabilise two countries which the US plans to use in the event of fresh hostilities against Iraq.
Saddam was also keen that Abu Nidal use his considerable expertise in terrorist techniques - gleaned from a six-month training course undertaken in China in the early 1970s - to train groups of al-Qaeda fighters who have taken refuge in northern Iraq.
Despite his previous willingness to assist Saddam, on this occasion Abu Nidal was not prepared to co-operate with the Iraq dictator's demands.
He believed that his political prospects - such as they were - would not be assisted either by conducting terrorist attacks or training a new generation of Islamic fanatics. And, for this intransigence, he paid with his life.