ABU NIDAL

born May 1937, Jaffa, Palestine [now Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel] byname of Sabri Khalil Albanna terrorist and leader of the Revolutionary Council of Fatah, more commonly known as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), or Abu Nidal Group. After the 1948 war following the creation of the State of Israel, his family fled Palestine, and for the next 20 years he lived in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. In the late 1960s Abu Nidal (the name means "Father of Struggles") joined Yasir 'Arafat's guerrilla group, Fatah, a component of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had as its aim the liberation of Palestine from Israeli control and the destruction of the Jewish state. He left the group in 1973 because of his dissatisfaction with moderates within Fatah who were willing to pursue diplomatic solutions to the Palestinian question. His new organization operated out of Iraq, Syria, and Libya, usually with the support of those governments. Many of his targets were Palestinians, and at a 1974 tribunal the PLO condemned Abu Nidal as an extremist, sentencing him to death in absentia. The ANO was held responsible for attacks against Arab and Israeli diplomats and government representatives in the Middle East and Europe. It also was alleged to have carried out hijackings (including that of an Egyptian airliner which resulted in the deaths of 60 people in 1985), bombings, and commando raids. Among its most infamous acts were the simultaneous attacks at the international airports in Rome and Vienna in December 1985, in which 18 people were killed, and the shooting of 21 worshipers in an Istanbul synagogue in 1986. In January 1991 his agents were thought to have been responsible for the assassination of Abu Iyad, the PLO's intelligence chief and one of 'Arafat's closest associates.