Who is abou nidal

The attacks struck at Middle Eastern, European and U. List of major attacks. Israel launched an invasion of Lebanon aimed at Arafat and repelling terrorists after Nidal's operatives attempted to assassinate the Israeli ambassador to Britain in June Search CNN. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Read our privacy guidelines. Contact us. Sabri al-Banna, also known as Abu Nidal, is photographed in Beirut in Abu Nidal: A life in the shadows.

Major attacks by Abu Nidal's group. We hope that, if true, his death will see the end of the organisation. He added: "This organisation was responsible for the deaths of innocent Britons, including two diplomats. The attacks were ferocious and indiscriminate. In France, victims said they felt cheated by his death. Francoise Rudetzky, a spokeswoman for SOS Attentat, a group that represents victims of terrorism, said many were "angry, very disappointed" that Abu Nidal had escaped justice for so long.

Ms Rudetzy said: "He benefited from the protection of several countries for 20 years, and he was never arrested and judged. Abu Nidal is believed to have died last Friday. The first report of his death came yesterday morning in one of the more reliable Palestinian papers, Al-Ayyam. Israel Radio almost immediately broadcast the news, and later there was independent confirmation from senior Palestinian sources.

Abu Nidal's brother, Mohammed al-Banna, a fruit and vegetable merchant who lives in Nablus, in the West Bank, said he heard about his death only from the media. I spoke to friends and relatives in Arab countries to check this out. They didn't know he was in Baghdad," he told Qatari satellite television station al-Jazeera. Yossi Melman, an Israeli author, who wrote a biography of Abu Nidal, said his death could be the result of illness but he could also have been assassinated, perhaps by one of his own men in the internal feuds for which his organisation is known or perhaps by an Iraqi government fearful that he knew too much about its operations.

But his presence in Baghdad was not considered an embarrassment to the Iraqi government at a time when it is facing a threatened US invasion. The US administration, though desperately seeking to link the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, to terrorism, has at no time made an issue of Abu Nidal's presence in the Iraqi capital. This may be, in part, because Abu Nidal's group is no longer operational. He moved to Baghdad about 18 months ago after he feared that the Egyptian government would arrest him in hospital and hand him over to western countries.

An Iraqi affairs specialist based in Beirut, Khairallah Khairallah, said Abu Nidal's relations with the Iraqi government were strained. Mr Khairallah said he maintained a symbolic presence in Baghdad, with a small office and one bodyguard.

He was wanted by the US, Britain, France and other countries. He was tried in absentia in Jordan last year for the assassination of a Jordanian diplomat and found guilty along with four colleagues.

Abu Nidal was born in a prosperous family in Jaffa, in what was then Palestine. After the creation of Israel in and the failure of the Arab invasion, he became a refugee, eventually joining Arafat's militant Fatah movement. He broke with Arafat in because he opposed a switch in tactics from international targets to confining attacks to exclusively Israeli ones.

He assassinated some of the most moderate of the Palestinian leadership, those seeking a settlement with Israel, and was sentenced to death by a Fatah court in absentia.