08/22/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-10083

DEATH OF A TERRORIST

According to news reports, Sabri al-Bana, also known as Abu Nidal, died of gunshot wounds at his home in Baghdad, Iraq. The circumstances of his death remain unclear.

Originally a member of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, Abu Nidal organized a splinter group, known as the Fatah-Revolutionary Council or Abu Nidal Organization. It attacked Israelis, pro-Arafat Palestinians, moderate Arab governments, Americans, and West Europeans. Its goal was to destroy efforts to negotiate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Abu Nidal Organization received safe haven, training, logistics, and money from Syria until 1987. Libya withdrew its sponsorship in 1998, prompting the terrorist group's move to Iraq, where it has long enjoyed the patronage of Saddam Hussein.

Abu Nidal terrorists have killed or wounded nearly nine-hundred people in twenty countries. They have attacked restaurants, hotels, synagogues, embassies, airliners, a commuter bus, and a cruise ship. The victims include government officials and many women and children.

In September 1985, Abu Nidal terrorists hijacked an Egyptian airliner to Malta. Sixty people were killed when Egyptian commandos attempted to rescue the hostages. In December 1985, they attacked the El Al Airline ticket counters at the Rome and Vienna airports with machineguns and grenades. Sixteen people were killed and sixty were wounded. In 1986, the Abu Nidal Organization murdered twenty-two Jewish worshippers at Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul. Also in 1986, Abu Nidal terrorists hijacked Pan Am flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan, killing seventeen and wounding more than one-hundred fifty people. In 1994, the Abu Nidal Organization assassinated a Jordanian diplomat in Lebanon.

But Abu Nidal and his terrorists badly underestimated those they sought to intimidate. Instead of giving in to terrorist threats, the Western democracies and moderate Arab governments fought back. They destroyed or damaged terrorist networks and pressured state sponsors like Libya and Syria to end their support for Abu Nidal terrorism. And despite ongoing terrorist attacks on Israel, negotiations for Middle East peace continue today.

Abu Nidal is dead. Whether he committed suicide or was murdered by the Saddam Hussein regime that long protected him, or by somebody else, may never be known. What is known is that the world is rid of one more terrorist.