(Daily Star - Lebanon) Ed Blanche - It might be prudent - and admittedly somewhat fanciful - to note that Abu Nidal's organization has in the past faked the deaths of its operatives and given them new identities to mislead intelligence services on their trail. One was Samir Mohammed Khadar, described by some as Abu Nidal's operations chief, whose first big assignment was the 1978 assassination of Egyptian writer Youssef Shanti in Cyprus. Khadar was linked to terrorist attacks in Italy and France in 1985 and 1986. Greek authorities believed Khadar was killed when his car blew up in Piraeus only hours before a terrorist attack on a cruise ship, the City of Poros, on July 11, 1988, in which nine French, Swedish, and Danish citizens were killed. Two men perished in the blast and among the debris police found weapons bearing Khadar's fingerprints and scraps of a passport bearing his photograph. But U.S. authorities, along with European security services, believed Khadar faked his death in Athens. Chief Superintendent Lars Forste of the Swedish security police commented: "The indications are that the car explosion was arranged to make believe that Khadar was killed." France issued an international arrest warrant for Khadar in 1992, and Sweden followed in 1994.
2002-08-30 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive