Editing Abu Nidal (section)

== Operations and relationships ==
Further information: List of attacks attributed to Abu Nidal

=== Shlomo Argov ===
Shlomo Argov was shot in the head as he left the Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, London.

On 3 June 1982, ANO operative Hussein Ghassan Said shot Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to Britain, once in the head as he left the Dorchester Hotel in London. Said was accompanied by Nawaf al-Rosan, an Iraqi intelligence officer, and Marwan al-Banna, Abu Nidal's cousin. Argov survived, but spent three months in a coma and the rest of his life disabled, until his death in February 2003.<sup>[63]</sup> The PLO quickly denied responsibility for the attack.<sup>[64]</sup>

[[Ariel Sharon]], then Israel's defence minister, responded three days later by invading Lebanon, where the PLO was based, a reaction that Seale argues Abu Nidal had intended. The Israeli government had been preparing to invade and Abu Nidal provided a pretext.<sup>[65]</sup> ''Der Spiegel'' put it to him in October 1985 that the assassination of Argov, when he knew Israel wanted to attack the PLO in Lebanon, made him appear to be working for the Israelis, in the view of Yasser Arafat.<sup>[66]</sup> He replied:

=== Rome and Vienna ===
Main article: Rome and Vienna airport attacks

Abu Nidal's most infamous operation was the 1985 attack on the Rome and Vienna airports.<sup>[67]</sup> On 27 December, at 08:15 GMT, four gunmen opened fire on the El Al ticket counter at the Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport in Rome, killing 16 and wounding 99. In Vienna International Airport a few minutes later, three men threw hand grenades at passengers waiting to check into a flight to Tel Aviv, killing four and wounding 39.<sup>[11][68]</sup> According to Seale, the gunmen had been told the people in civilian clothes at the check-in counter were Israeli pilots returning from a training mission.<sup>[69]</sup>

Austria and Italy had both been involved in trying to arrange peace talks. Sources close to Abu Nidal told Seale that Libyan intelligence had supplied the weapons. The damage to the PLO was enormous, according to Abu Iyad, Arafat's deputy. Most people in the West and even many Arabs could not distinguish between the ANO and Fatah, he said. "When such horrible things take place, ordinary people are left thinking that all Palestinians are criminals."<sup>[70]</sup>

=== United States bombing of Libya ===
Main article: 1986 United States bombing of Libya

48th Tactical Fighter Wing F-111F aircraft takes off from RAF Lakenheathin England to bomb Libya, 14 April 1986.

On 15 April 1986, the US launched bombing raids from British bases against Tripoli and Benghazi, killing around 100, in retaliation for the bombing of a Berlin nightclub used by US service personnel.<sup>[71][72]</sup> The dead were reported to include Hanna Gaddafi, the adoptive daughter of Libyan leader [[Muammar Gaddafi]]; two of his other children were injured.<sup>[73]</sup> British journalist Alec Collett, who had been kidnapped in Beirut in March, was hanged after the airstrikes, reportedly by ANO operatives; his remains were found in the Beqaa Valley in November 2009.<sup>[74]</sup> The bodies of two British teachers, Leigh Douglas and Philip Padfield, and an American, Peter Kilburn, were found in a village near Beirut on 17 April 1986; the Arab Fedayeen Cells, a name linked to Abu Nidal, claimed responsibility.<sup>[75]</sup>British journalist John McCarthy was kidnapped the same day.<sup>[76]</sup>

=== Hindawi affair ===
Main article: Hindawi affair

On 17 April 1986—the day the bodies of the teachers were found and McCarthy was kidnapped—Ann Marie Murphy, a pregnant Irish chambermaid, was discovered in Heathrow airport with a Semtex bomb in the false bottom of one of her bags. She had been about to board an El Al flight from New York to Tel Aviv via London. The bag had been packed by her Jordanian fiancé Nizar Hindawi, who had said he would join her in Israel where they were to be married.<sup>[77]</sup> According to Melman, Abu Nidal had recommended Hindawi to Syrian intelligence.<sup>[78]</sup> Seale writes that the bomb had been manufactured by Abu Nidal's technical committee, who had delivered it to Syrian air force intelligence. It was sent to London in a diplomatic bag and given to Hindawi. According to Seale, it was widely believed that the attack was in response to Israel having forced down a jet, two months earlier, carrying Syrian officials to Damascus, which Israel had supposed was carrying senior Palestinians.<sup>[79]</sup>

=== Pan Am Flight 73 ===
Main article: Pan Am Flight 73

On 5 September 1986, four ANO gunmen hijacked Pan Am Flight 73 at Karachi Airport on its way from Mumbai to New York, holding 389 passengers and crew for 16 hours in the plane on the tarmac before detonating grenades inside the cabin. Neerja Bhanot, the flight's senior purser, was able to open an emergency door, and most passengers escaped; 20 died, including Bhanot, and 120 were wounded.<sup>[80][81]</sup> The London ''Times'' reported in March 2004 that Libya had been behind the hijacking.<sup>[82]</sup>

=== Relationship with Gaddafi ===
Muammar Gaddafi

Abu Nidal began to move his organization out of Syria to Libya in the summer of 1986,<sup>[83]</sup> arriving there in March 1987. In June that year the Syrian government expelled him, in part because of the Hindawi affair and Pan Am Flight 73 hijacking.<sup>[84]</sup> He repeatedly took credit during this period for operations in which he had no involvement, including the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing, 1985 Bradford City stadium fire, and 1986 assassination of Zafer al-Masri, the mayor of Nablus (killed by the PFLP, according to Seale). By publishing a congratulatory note in the ANO's magazine, he also implied that he had been behind the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, writes Seale.<sup>[85]</sup>

Abu Nidal and Libya's leader, Muammar Gaddafi, allegedly became great friends, each holding what Marie Colvin and Sonya Murad called a "dangerous combination of an inferiority complex mixed with the belief that he was a man of great destiny". The relationship gave Abu Nidal a sponsor and Gaddafi a mercenary.<sup>[86]</sup> Seale reports that Libya brought out the worst in Abu Nidal. He would not allow even the most senior ANO members to socialize with each other; all meetings had to be reported to him. All passports had to be handed over. No one was allowed to travel without his permission. Ordinary members were not allowed to have telephones; senior members were allowed to make local calls only.<sup>[87]</sup> His members knew nothing about his daily life, including where he lived. If he wanted to entertain, Seale writes, he would take over the home of another member.<sup>[88]</sup>

According to Abu Bakr, speaking to ''Al Hayatt'' in 2002, Abu Nidal said he was behind the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988; a former head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines was later convicted.<sup>[89]</sup> Abu Nidal reportedly said of Lockerbie, according to Seale: "We do have some involvement in this matter, but if anyone so much as mentions it, I will kill him with my own hands!" Seale writes that the ANO appeared to have no connection to it; one of Abu Nidal's associates told him, "If an American soldier tripped in some corner of the globe, Abu Nidal would instantly claim it as his own work."<sup>[83]</sup>

=== Banking with BCCI ===
In the late 1980s British intelligence learned that the ANO held accounts with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in London.<sup>[90]</sup> BCCI was closed in July 1991 by banking regulators in six countries after evidence emerged of widespread fraud.<sup>[91]</sup> Abu Nidal himself was said to have visited London using the name Shakar Farhan; a BCCI branch manager, who passed information about the ANO accounts to MI5, reportedly drove him around several stores in London without realizing who he was.<sup>[92]</sup> Abu Nidal was using a company called SAS International Trading and Investments in Warsaw as cover for arms deals.<sup>[93]</sup> The company's transactions included the purchase of riot guns, ostensibly for Syria, then when the British refused an export licence to Syria, for an African state; in fact, half the shipment went to the police in East Germany and half to Abu Nidal.<sup>[94]</sup>

=== Assassination of Abu Iyad ===
On 14 January 1991 in Tunis, the night before US forces moved into Kuwait, the ANO assassinated Abu Iyad, head of PLO intelligence, along with Abu al-Hol, Fatah's chief of security, and Fakhri al-Umari, another Fatah aide; all three men were shot in Abu Iyad's home. The killer, Hamza Abu Zaid, confessed that an ANO operative had hired him. When he shot Abu Iyad, he reportedly shouted, "Let Atif Abu Bakr help you now!", a reference to the senior ANO member who had left the group in 1989, and whom Abu Nidal believed had been planted within the ANO by Abu Iyad as a spy.<sup>[95]</sup> Abu Iyad had known that Abu Nidal nursed a hatred of him, in part because he had kept Abu Nidal out of the PLO. But the real reason for the hatred, Abu Iyad told Seale, was that he had protected Abu Nidal in his early years within the movement. Given his personality, Abu Nidal could not acknowledge that debt. Seale writes that the murder "must therefore be seen as a final settlement of old scores".<sup>[96]</sup>