Birth: NULL/NULL/1948 Death:NULL/NULL/2004
Born in Tireh, Haifa, on 10 Dec. 1948; his family fled soon after to Lebanon and eventually settled in Yarmouk RC in Syria, where he grew up; joined the PFLP in the late 1960s and served as its spokesperson in the 1970s, but then joined the PFLP-GC in 1973; after PFLP-GC’s support for Syria’s invasion of Lebanon, split in April 1977 and formed – together with Tala‘at Yaqoub – the PLF (Palestinian Liberation Front); after the PLF broke into factions in 1983, he remained in Tunis faithful to Arafat (while Tala‘at Yaqoub joined the dissidents in Damascus); studied English and Arabic Literature at Damascus University, graduating in 1984; member of the PLO Exec. Committee from Nov. 1984; responsible for several actions, incl. the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in Oct. 1985, during which Jewish-American tourist Leon Klinghoffer was killed, and an attempted commando raid on a beach near Tel Aviv in 1990, which prompted the US to suspend talks with the PLO and forced him to resign from the PLO Exec. Committee (Sept. 1991); became Sec.-Gen. of the PLF after the death of Tala‘at Yaqoub; was expelled from Tunisia under immense political pressure from the US and Italy following the Achille Lauro affair and moved to Iraq where Pres. Saddam Hussein gave him asylum; was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by Italy and remained on the wanted-list of the US; laid down his arms when Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accord in 1993; entered the PA areas for the April 1996 PNC meeting and apologized for murder of Klinghoffer; last visited the OPT in Aug. 2000; was captured and detained along with several of his aides by US troops in Baghdad on 15 April 2003; died while in US custody in Iraq on 8 March 2004; buried in Damascus.
