Editing Abu Nidal (section)

=== 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>