Editing Abu Nidal (section)

== ANO ==

=== Nature of the organization ===
In addition to Fatah: The Revolutionary Council, the ANO called itself the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, Black June (for actions against Syria), Black September (for actions against Jordan), the Revolutionary Arab Brigades, the Revolutionary Organization of Socialist Muslims, the Egyptian Revolution, Revolutionary Egypt, ''Al-Asifa'' ("the Storm," a name also used by Fatah), ''Al-Iqab'' ("the Punishment"), and the Arab Nationalist Youth Organization.<sup>[1]</sup>

The group had up to 500 members, chosen from young men in the Palestinian refugee camps and in Lebanon, who were promised good pay and help looking after their families.<sup>[49][50]</sup> They would be sent to training camps in whichever country was hosting the ANO at the time (Syria, Iraq or Libya), then organized into small cells.<sup>[51]</sup> Once in, As`ad AbuKhalil and Michael Fischbach write, they were not allowed to leave again.<sup>[52]</sup> The group assumed complete control over the membership. One member who spoke to Patrick Seale was told before being sent overseas: "If we say, 'Drink alcohol'", do so. If we say, 'Get married,' find a woman and marry her. If we say, 'Don't have children,' you must obey. If we say, 'Go and kill King Hussein,' you must be ready to sacrifice yourself!"<sup>[53]</sup>

Seale writes that recruits were asked to write out their life stories, including names and addresses of family and friends, then sign a paper saying they agreed to execution if discovered to have intelligence connections. If suspected, they would be asked to rewrite the whole story, without discrepancies.<sup>[54]</sup> The ANO's newspaper ''Filastin al-Thawra'' regularly announced the execution of traitors.<sup>[52]</sup> Abu Nidal believed that the group had been penetrated by Israeli agents, and there was a sense that Israel may have used the ANO to undermine more moderate Palestinian groups. Terrorism experts regard the view that Abu Nidal himself was such agent as "far-fetched".<sup>[5]</sup>

=== Committee for Revolutionary Justice ===
Main article: Abu Nidal Organization internal executions

There were reports of purges throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Around 600 ANO members were killed in Lebanon and Libya, including 171 in one night in November 1987, when they were lined up, shot and thrown into a mass grave. Dozens were kidnapped in Syria and killed in the Badawi refugee camp. Most of the decisions to kill, Abu Daoud told Seale, were taken by Abu Nidal "in the middle of the night, after he [had] knocked back a whole bottle of whiskey."<sup>[55]</sup> The purges led to the defection from the ANO in 1989 of Atif Abu Bakr, head of the ANO's political directorate, who returned to Fatah.<sup>[56]</sup>

Members were routinely tortured by the "Committee for Revolutionary Justice" until they confessed to disloyalty. Seale writes that reports of [[torture]] included hanging a man naked, whipping him until he was unconscious, reviving him with cold water, then rubbing salt or chili powder into his wounds. A naked prisoner would be forced into a car tyre with his legs and backside in the air, then whipped, wounded, salted and revived with cold water. A member's testicles might be fried in oil, or melted plastic dripped onto his skin. Between interrogations, prisoners would be tied up in tiny cells. If the cells were full, Seale writes, they might be buried with a pipe in their mouths for air and water; if Abu Nidal wanted them dead, a bullet would be fired down the pipe instead.<sup>[57]</sup>

=== Intelligence Directorate ===
The Intelligence Directorate was formed in 1985 to oversee special operations. It had four subcommittees: the Committee for Special Missions, the Foreign Intelligence Committee, the Counterespionage Committee and the Lebanon Committee. Led by Abd al-Rahman Isa, the longest-serving member of the ANO—Seale writes that Isa was unshaven and shabby, but charming and persuasive—the directorate maintained 30–40 people overseas who looked after the ANO's arms caches in various countries. It trained staff, arranged passports and visas, and reviewed security at airports and seaports. Members were not allowed to visit each other at home, and no one outside the directorate was supposed to know who was a member.<sup>[58]</sup> Abu Nidal demoted Isa in 1987, believing he had become too close to other figures within the ANO. Always keen to punish members by humiliating them, he insisted that Isa remain in the Intelligence Directorate, where he had to work for his previous subordinates, who according to Seale were told to treat him with contempt.<sup>[59]</sup>

=== Committee for Special Missions ===
The job of the Committee for Special Missions was to choose targets.<sup>[60]</sup> It had started life as the Military Committee, headed by Naji Abu al-Fawaris, who had led the attack on Heinz Nittel, head of the Israel-Austria Friendship League, who was shot and killed in 1981.<sup>[61]</sup> In 1982 the committee changed its name to the Committee for Special Missions, headed by Dr. Ghassan al-Ali, who had been born in the West Bank and educated in England, where he obtained a BA and MA in chemistry and married a British woman (later divorced).<sup>[62]</sup> A former ANO member told Seale that Ali favoured "the most extreme and reckless operations."<sup>[60]</sup>