Imad Mughniyah

Imad Fayez Mughniyeh ( ar, عماد فايز مغنية; 7 December 1962 – 12 February 2008), alias al-Hajj Radwan (), was the founding member of Lebanon's Islamic Jihad Organization and number two in Hezbollah's leadership. Information about Mughniyeh is limited, but he is believed to have been Hezbollah's Chief of Staff and understood to have overseen Hezbollah's military, intelligence, and security apparatuses. He was one of the main founders of Hezbollah in the 1980s. He has been described as "a brilliant military tactician and very elusive". He was often referred to as an ‘untraceable ghost’.

U.S. and Israeli officials have long accused Mughniyeh of being directly and personally involved in terrorist attacks which has resulted in many suicide bombings, murders, kidnappings, and assassinations. It began with the Beirut barracks bombing and US embassy bombings, both of which took place in 1983 and killed over 350, as well as the kidnapping of dozens of foreigners in Lebanon in the 1980s. He was indicted in Argentina for his alleged role in the 1992 Israeli embassy attack in Buenos Aires. The highest-profile attacks for which it is claimed he is responsible took place in the early 1980s, shortly after the founding of Hezbollah, when Mughniyeh was in his early twenties. U.S. intelligence officials have accused him of killing more United States citizens than any other man prior to the September 11 attacks, and the bombings and kidnappings he is alleged to have organized are credited with all but eliminating and completely removing the US military presence in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Mughniyeh was known by his ''nom de guerre'' Al-Hajj Radwan. Mughniyeh was included in the European Union's list of wanted terroristsCOUNCIL COMMON POSITION 2005/847/CFSP of 29 November 200
Official Journal of the European Union
Accessed 17 August 2006 and had a US$5 million bounty on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list. To many in his home country, Lebanon and the Middle East, he’s seen to be a national symbol and hero.

As part of a joint CIA – Mossad operation, Mughniyeh was killed on the night of 12 February 2008 by a car bomb that was detonated as he passed by on foot, in the Kafr Sousa neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria.
"Will Hezbullah avenge the hit on its terror chief?" by Yaakov Katz, 11 February 2011

Early life

Mughniyeh was born in the village of Tayr Debba, Tayr Dibba, near Tyre, on 7 December 1962 to a family of poor farmers who harvested olives and lemons in the orchards of Lebanon's southern Shi'a heartland. His father's name was Fayez. For some time it was mistakenly thought that he was the son of Jawad (or Javad) Mughniyeh, a religious figure and author. His birth date had also been given as July 1962. Mughniyeh had two younger brothers, Jihad and Fouad. About a decade after Mughniyeh's birth, his father moved the family to southern Beirut. CIA South Group records state that Mughniyeh lived in Ayn Al-Dilbah, an impoverished neighborhood in South Beirut. p. 98–99 Mughniyeh is described as having been a popular boy and a "natural entertainer" who cracked jokes at family weddings and "worked the crowd with a confidence unusual for a youth his age."

Mughniyeh and his cousin Mustafa Badr Al Din became active in the Palestinian Fatah movement at an early age. Mughniyeh was discovered by fellow Lebanese Ali Abu Hassan Deeb (who would later become a leader in Hezbollah) and quickly rose through the ranks of the movement. In the mid-1970s, Mugniyeh organized the "Student Brigade," a unit of 100 young men which became part of Yasser Arafat's elite Force 17. Mughniyeh temporarily left Fatah in 1981 due to differences of opinion on the regime of Saddam Hussein. Mughniyeh was a Shiite and deeply religious and was upset by the murder of the Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr in 1980 as well as a previous attempt by the Iraqi intelligence on the life of Lebanese Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah.

Fatah was formally in alliance the Lebanese National Movement, which included the Lebanese pro-Iraqi branch of the Ba’th party. Mughniyeh and some of his Lebanese Shiite comrades were forced to leave Fatah after engaging in armed confrontations with Ba’th party activists. They had previously organized a body guard unit for Ayatollah Fadlallah and other Shiite clerics in Lebanon. Mughniyeh accompanied Ayatollah Fadlallah on a Hajj pilgrimage in 1980 and thus earned his Hajj title.

Mughniyeh was briefly a student in the engineering department at the American University of Beirut. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he joined Fatah. He participated in the defence of West Beirut, where he was wounded in the fighting. After the withdrawal of PLO forces from Beirut in September 1982, Mughniyeh acquired an important position in the nascent resistance to the Israeli occupation, due to his knowledge of arms caches left behind by the Palestinians. He remained a Fatah member during this period but also worked with other factions, such as the leftist Lebanese National Movement and Islamic resistance groups. Mughniyeh remained a member of Fatah until 1984, when he joined the newly created Islamic Resistance of Hezbollah. However, he remained close to Fatah leader Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) until the latter's assassination in 1988. He also remained deeply committed to the Palestine cause throughout his life and apparently founded the secret "Committee for Elimination of Israel" inside Hezbollah in 2000. In later years, and especially after the Oslo accords, Mughniyeh and Hezbollah sided with the more militant Palestinian factions such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

Mughniyeh worked as the chief security for Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, a Shiia cleric and a spiritual mentor to many in Lebanon's Shi'a community, whose political consciousness was on the rise. Fadlallah held no formal political role, "opposed violence and sectarian division, and defied growing Iranian influence in Lebanon."

Personal life

In 1983, Mughniyeh married his cousin, Saada Badr Al Din, who is the sister of Mustafa Badr Al Din. Mughniyeh had three children according to his mother: Fatima (born August 1984), Mustafa (born January 1987), and Jihad (estimated to have been age 25 at death). In September 1991, Mugniyeh's wife and children were sent to Tehran for security reasons. Later his family began to live in south Lebanon. Mughniyeh also married an Iranian woman, Wafaa Mughniyeh, with whom he lived in Damascus.

On 21 December 1994 a car bomb in Chyah, Beirut, killed Mughniyeh’s brother, Fuad. Two other people were killed in the explosion and sixteen wounded.

Mughniyeh's younger son, Jihad, was killed in the January 2015 Mazraat Amal incident in the Syrian Golan sector on 18 January 2015. Five other Hezbollah members and an Iranian Quds Force general were also killed in the attack.

Personality

According to former CIA agent Robert Baer, "Mughniyah is probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we’ve ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. He enters by one door, exits by another, changes his cars daily, never makes appointments on a telephone, never is predictable. He only uses people that are loyal to him that he can fully trust. He doesn't just recruit people." He was described as "tall, slender, well-dressed and handsome ... penetrating eyes," speaking some English but better French.

"Both bin Laden and Mughniyeh were pathological killers," 30-year veteran CIA officer Milton Bearden said. "But there was always a nagging amateurishness about bin Laden—his wildly hyped background, his bogus and false claims. … Bin Laden cowered and hid. Mughniyeh spent his life giving us the finger."

Nasrallah also stated that, "Hajj Imad is among the best leaders and commanders in the Lebanese arena. He had an important role during the occupation f southern Lebanon by Israelby 2000. But as for his relationship with Hezbollah, we maintain the tradition of not discussing names." Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, who commanded the elite Quds Force, described Mugniyeh as "the legend of our time," grief caused by whose loss was only second to that of Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Soleimani stated that what made Mugniyeh unique was not his expertise in guerrilla warfare but "his attachment to something superterrestrial." According to Soleimani, Mugniyeh was so courteous that he was never seen boasting to fellow Hezbollah leaders about his unique military record in fighting Israel.

After his death, Mugniyeh acquired a storied and folkloric persona. To many in his home country, Lebanon, and in the Middle East, he symbolizes resistance to foreign military occupation, a hero and a mastermind who single-handedly drove out the American and Israeli armies. The man behind the Stabbing of Salman Rushdie, had a fake driver's license with the name Hassan Mughniyah, which suggests a mix between the forename and surname of Hassan Nasrallah and Imad Mughniyeh, respectively.

According to his family, he was a dedicated father and had a reputation for modesty, respect and humility, to the extent that his neighbors in Syria thought he was a driver for the Iranian embassy.

Allegations

U.S. and Israeli officials have implicated Mughniyeh of many terrorist attacks, primarily against American and Israeli targets. These include 18 April 1983 bombing of the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 63 people including 17 Americans whom among them were 7 CIA officers which included Robert Ames, the head of the Near East Division. Agreement is not entirely universal on Mughniyeh's involvement.

Mughniyeh was also accused of planning and organising the 23 October 1983 truck bombings against French paratroopers and the U.S. Marine barracks, attacks which killed 60 French soldiers and 240 Marines. While a student at the American University of Beirut (AUB) on 18 January 1984, Mughniyeh allegedly assassinated Malcolm H. Kerr (father of former NBA player/current coach Steve Kerr), the school's president. On 20 September 1984, he is alleged to have attacked the US embassy annex building.

The United States indicted Mughniyeh (and his collaborator, Hassan Izz al-Din) for the 14 June 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, in which he tortured and murdered the U.S. Navy Seabee diver Robert Stethem

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