Abu Nidal

Abu Nidal ran the most lethal Palestinian splinter group of the 1970s and 1980s, killed more Palestinians than Israelis, and died in Baghdad in circumstances that have never been established. He was born Sabri al-Banna in Jaffa to a wealthy citrus family that lost everything in 1948, joined Fatah, and served as its representative in Baghdad before breaking with Arafat in 1974 over the PLO's move towards a negotiated two-state settlement. His Fatah Revolutionary Council was condemned to death in absentia by Fatah and reciprocated by assassinating PLO moderates across Europe, including Said Hammami in London and Issam Sartawi in Portugal, both of whom had argued for talking to Israelis. The attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador Shlomo Argov in London in June 1982 was the immediate pretext for Israel's invasion of Lebanon, though the PLO had not carried it out and Abu Nidal was its enemy. The group also attacked the Rome and Vienna airports in 1985 and hijacked EgyptAir 648, and its total is generally put at several hundred dead in twenty countries. He was sheltered in turn by Iraq, Syria and Libya, and worked for whichever host would pay, which led to the persistent and unproven suggestion that he was penetrated or run by one or more intelligence services. He killed large numbers of his own members in internal purges. He was found shot in a Baghdad apartment in August 2002; Iraq said suicide, others said the regime had killed him as the Americans prepared to invade. The organisation did not survive him. Patrick Seale wrote the standard book on him in 1992 and argued the Mossad case; most later scholarship rejects it. His daughter said he had become paranoid and violent towards his own family in his last years. Britain expelled Iraqi diplomats over the Argov attempt.

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