Posted on 02/13/2008 10:01:07 AM PST by NormsRevenge
DAMASCUS, Syria - Imad Mughniyeh, the suspected mastermind of dramatic attacks on the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks that killed hundreds of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, has died in a car bombing in Syria.
The Islamic militant group Hezbollah and its Iranian backers on Wednesday blamed Israel for the killing of Mughniyeh, Hezbollah's security chief in the 1980s who was one of the world's most wanted and elusive terrorists. Israel denied involvement.
Hezbollah did not say how or where Mughniyeh was killed. But Iranian state television and the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria said he died in a car bombing in the Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday night.
Hezbollah's announcement of the death came a few hours after a late night explosion in Damascus destroyed a vehicle. Witnesses in the Syrian capital said at the time that a passerby was killed as security forces sealed off the area and removed the body. But authorities there would not give details.
"With all pride, we declare a great jihadist leader of the Islamic resistance in Lebanon joining the martyrs," said a statement carried on Hezbollah television. "The brother commander hajj Imad Mughinyeh became a martyr at the hands of the Zionist Israelis."
Mughniyeh, 45, had been in hiding for years. He was one of the fugitives indicted in the United States for planning and participating in the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed. He is on an FBI most wanted list with a $5 million bounty on his head for that indictment.
Mughniyeh was believed to have directed a group that held Westerners hostage in Lebanon. Among them was journalist Terry Anderson, a former Associated Press chief Middle East correspondent who was held captive for six years.
"I can't say I'm either surprised or sad," Andersen told the AP by phone from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, where he was sailing. "He was not a good man — certainly the primary actor in my kidnapping and many others," he added. "To hear that his career has finally ended is a good thing and it's appropriate that he goes up in a car bomb."
In Washington, the State Department also welcomed news of his death but stressed it did not have independent information on the reports.
"The world is a better place without this man in it," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who added that "one way or the other, he was brought to justice."
Israel accused Mughniyeh of involvement in the 1992 bombing of its embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina in which 29 people were killed.
Argentine prosecutors alleged that Iranian officials orchestrated the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center that killed 85 people and entrusted Hezbollah to carry it out. Argentine special prosecutor Alberto Nisman accused Mughniyeh of involvement.
Tehran denied that Iranians were involved in that attack and accused the United States and Israel of using the case as a political weapon against Iran.
Iranian media reports Wednesday said the bomb that killed Mughniyeh went off in the Kafar Soussa area of Damascus where an Iranian school and a Syrian intelligence office are also located.
One report said Mughniyeh was leaving his house and about to get into his car when it exploded. Another said he was attending a ceremony at the Iranian school in Damascus and was killed as he left the function.
"This action is yet another brazen example of organized state terrorism by the Zionist regime," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said, according to the state news agency IRNA.
Hezbollah, whose top leader Hassan Nasrallah has been largely in hiding since the 2006 war fearing Israeli assassination, did not immediately threaten revenge.
Israel denied involvement and said it was looking into the death.
"Israel rejects the attempt by terror groups to attribute to it any involvement in this incident," said a statement from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office.
Israeli lawmaker Danny Yatom, a former head of the Mossad spy agency, praised the killing.
"In the fight against terror today by the free and democratic world, I think that the free and democratic world today achieved a very, very important goal," Yatom said.
Syria has not commented on the death. If confirmed that Syria was hosting Mughniyeh, it would be an embarrassment for the government of President Bashar Assad. Syria is accused of hosting a number of Palestinian extremist groups and has been accused by the U.S. of sponsoring terrorism.
The death could also could further stir up turmoil in deeply divided Lebanon, where a Hezbollah-led opposition is locked in a bitter power struggle with the Western-backed government. Hezbollah called for a massive gathering of its supporters for Mughniyeh's funeral in southern Beirut on Thursday.
Mughniyeh was Hezbollah's security chief during a turbulent period in Lebanon's civil war. He has been accused of masterminding the April 1983 car bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, and the simultaneous truck bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and French military base in Beirut, killing 58 French soldiers and 241 Marines.
He was indicted in the United States for the 1985 TWA hijacking in which Shiite militants seized the 747 and flew it back and forth between Beirut and Algiers demanding the release of Lebanese Shiites captured by Israel. During the hijacking, the body of Navy diver Robert Stethem, a passenger on the plane, was dumped on the tarmac of Beirut airport.
During Lebanon's civil war, Mughniyeh was also believed to have directed a string of kidnappings of Americans and other foreigners, including Anderson — who was held for six years until his release in 1991 — and CIA station chief William Buckley, who was killed in 1985.
Anderson was the last American hostage freed in a complicated deal that involved Israel's release of Lebanese prisoners, Iran's sway with the kidnappers, Syria's influence and — according to an Iranian radio broadcast — promises by the United States and Germany not to retaliate against the kidnappers.
Giandomenico Picco, an Italian diplomat working at the time as a special assistant to U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, said he was certain but never able to absolutely confirm that the hooded man he met in the slums of Beirut to finalize the deal was Mughniyeh.
On Wednesday afternoon, Mughniyeh's body was brought to Beirut and laid in a refrigerated coffin, wrapped in Hezbollah's yellow flag. Al-Manar showed four black-clad uniformed guerrillas standing at attention on both sides of the coffin in a Hezbollah hall in south Beirut suburb of Roueiss, a stronghold of the militant group.
His father, Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheik Naim Kassem, and other Hezbollah officials received condolences at the hall from allied Lebanese politicians and representatives of militant Palestinian factions. Some pro-U.S. politicians including Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri set aside their deep differences and offered written condolences.
Mughinyeh's killing was the first major attack against a leader of Hezbollah since the 1992 helicopter strike that killed the Hezbollah secretary-general Sheik Abbas Mussawi in southern Lebanon.
Little has been known about Mughniyeh since the end of the Lebanese civil war and Hezbollah has consistently refused to talk about him. The announcement of his death was the first mention of him in years.
Al-Manar on Wednesday aired a rare picture of Mughniyeh — showing a burly, bespectacled man with a black beard wearing a military camouflage and a military cap. It did not say when the picture was taken. Mughniyeh has been reported by the media and intelligence agencies to have undergone plastic surgery to avoid detection as he moved around in the 1990s.
American intelligence officials have described Mughniyeh as Hezbollah's operations chief who was believed to have moved between Lebanon, Syria and Iran in disguise.
Mughniyeh's last public appearance was believed to be at the funeral of his brother Fuad, who was killed on Dec. 12, 1994, when a booby-trapped car blew up in the southern suburb of Beirut.
In 2006, Mughniyeh was reported to have met with hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Syria. Tehran and the country's paramilitary Revolutionary Guards have never publicly disclosed the extent of their links with their protege Hezbollah.
____
On the Net:
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/termugniyah.htm
In a file photo British soldiers give a hand in rescue operations at the site of the bomb-wrecked U.S. Marine command center near Beirut airport Sunday, Oct. 23, 1983. Imad Mughniyeh, the militant accused of attacks that left hundreds of Americans and Israelis dead, has been killed, Hezbollah said Wednesday Feb. 13, 2008. He was suspected of masterminding the attack on Marine base in Lebanon that killed more than 260 Americans in 1983. (AP Photo/Bill Foley/File)
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Huh, this is the tenth repost and he’s STILL dead!
Imad? Well, if he wasn’t before he sure as hell is now!
You have the right to remain DEAD motherf*****.
L
Pictures? I could use the chuckle.
Bwahahaha! Stop it! Hahaha!
Searching appears to be dead too.
I would happily read 50 duplicate threads on this topic. We’ve been waiting to read about this terrorist scum’s demise since the early 80s.
It’s about time that POS got it. Too bad it wasn’t a direct action hit by a US hunter-killer team. Or, perhaps the purported bomb was placed by US commandos...wouldn’t be the first time.
Oh, they’re very into Human Rights in the middle East, yaknow.. ;-)
Human Rights Watch excludes Yemen from countries violating human rights
http://www.yobserver.com/front-page/10013693.html
Syria is one of 13 on their local list of top offenders.
lists 13 Arab nations including Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.
We have been posting one of those "rare" pictures here on FR:
Mugniyah behind the pilot: 
some folks here think one post of an event is enough and misunderstand that it isn’t a sin to post another separately sourced item as some might hint . we have some vey thoro thread coppers here, I reckun. ;-)
this is the first full blown ap piece I have seen, if someone has one earlier, fine, I’ll yank it.
oh well. on to the next one. and savor his one.
Thanks for the shots!
was he in a VW?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Anyone who attends his funeral may want to avoid cars in the future.
And just about every thread will add some additional detail.....
Yup, lots of stuff to be gleaned from any number of sources,, and a lot of chaff to be sifted thru as well.. but .. some news is better than no news.
This should have sent a shudder up and down the backs of a few other Pali leaders who hang out in Syria and have the locals do their bidding in Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere.
Next , indeeed. ;-)
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