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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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032089
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03208900.029
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1990-09-17
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WORLD, Page 42The Man Who Holds the Hostages
It is no secret who holds Terry Anderson. Imad Mughniyah is
his name. He is a 38-year-old Lebanese leader of the Shi`ite
fundamentalist group Hizballah whose history of terrorism is
grislier than the record of Palestinian renegade Abu Nidal.
Mughniyah's villainy, U.S. officials say, runs from bombings, like
the suicide attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in
Beirut, to hijackings. He is a prime suspect in the U.S. for his
alleged role in the 1985 skyjacking of TWA Flight 847 in which a
Navy diver was murdered. And he has made a specialty of kidnaping:
U.S. officials believe that Mughniyah, under the cloak of cover
names like Islamic Jihad and the Revolutionary Justice
Organization, has been involved in the kidnaping of at least 31
Westerners since 1984 and that he continues to hold most of the 13
still in captivity.
The kidnapers specifically wanted Terry Anderson. Fatefully,
perhaps, the reporter advertised his availability the day before
his capture, when he ventured into Beirut's southern suburbs to
quiz Hizballah spiritual leader Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.
But Anderson's colleagues at the Associated Press believe he may
have put himself on Hizballah's blacklist as far back as 1983, when
he traveled to their stronghold in Baalbek to grill Shi`ite leaders
about the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks.
The grandson of a Shi`ite mullah, Mughniyah trained with Yasser
Arafat's Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
A high school dropout, he excelled at terrorism; his boldness and
quick grasp of explosives and weaponry impressed his commanders.
But he fell out with Fatah leaders and in 1982, when Israeli troops
invaded Lebanon and occupied his village, Teir Debbe, Mughniyah
joined the newly formed and more radical Hizballah (Party of God).
He took to wearing religious garb even as he recruited activists
and professionals to the Shi`ite cause. He rose quickly to the top
of the organization, and as security chief, Mughniyah is thought
to be the group's most powerful figure. He continues to hold the
Westerners captive despite public pleas from Fadlallah that they
be set free.
His original motivation was to avenge the mistreatment of
Shi`ites in Lebanon and to vent his hatred of the U.S. and Israel.
But U.S. sources say he has become obsessed with trying to secure
the freedom of his brother-in-law Mustafa Badreddin and 16 other
Shi`ites jailed in Kuwait after a 1983 bombing blitz. Mughniyah
launched his subsequent kidnaping and hijacking spree to spring the
17 in a prisoners-for-hostages swap. Among his victims: William
Buckley, the CIA station chief, who died in captivity.
Mughniyah reportedly gets his financing from Tehran, and is
considered Iran's man in Lebanon; his closest mentors there include
conservative leaders locked in rivalry with Iran's would-be
pragmatists. Even so, Mughniyah has been forced to free numerous
American, French and West German hostages when it served Iran's
interests, while his personal demands have never been met.
Mughniyah seems content to bide his time until the U.S. breaks.
But he has not tired of finding ways to press Hizballah's
confrontation with the West. Britain's Guardian newspaper reported
last month that he was busy organizing mass demonstrations in
Lebanon. The cause: demanding Salman Rushdie's death for writing
The Satanic Verses.