Ali Hassan Salameh

Ali Hassan Salameh (علي حسن سلامة, ʿAlī Ḥasan Salāmah; 1 April 1941 – 22 January 1979) was a Palestinian militant who was the chief of operations (code name Abu Hassan) for Black September and founder of Force 17.

Salameh was born in the Palestinian town of Qula, near the city of Jaffa, to a wealthy family on 1 April 1941.

He was the son of Shaykh Hassan Salameh, who was killed in action by the Israeli army during the 1948 Palestine war near Lydda.

Ali Salameh was educated in Germany and is thought to have received his military training in Cairo and Moscow.

He was known for flaunting his wealth, being surrounded by women and driving sports cars, and having popular appeal among Palestinian young men; his nickname underlined his popularity—the "Red Prince" (الأمير الاحمر).

He served as the security chief of Fatah.

Salameh served as the key bridge between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1970 until his death after being recruited as a CIA asset by Robert Ames.

The PLO, at the request of the US, had undertaken steps to help ensure the security of both the US Embassy—Salameh responded by posting a PLO guard unit there —and, more generally, American citizens resident in Lebanon.

The contacts later developed more extensively as the PLO offered its intelligence assistance in regard to larger regional issues.

The US had undertaken with Israel to avoid contacts with the PLO, but US security interests under Gerald Ford, on the advice of Henry Kissinger, enabled an unofficial relationship which, when discovered by Israel, deeply disturbed Israeli officials.

When asked by the Israelis, US officials denied the relationship.

The desire to disrupt the channels between the US and the PLO was one of the motivations behind his assassination.

Salameh received dozens of CIA alerts of the Mossad's intention to assassinate him.

The CIA also provided him with encrypted communications equipment and considered sending him an armored car.

He was also warned by the CIA that his practice of driving around Beirut in convoys of vehicles carrying bodyguards left him vulnerable to an Israeli assassination.

After the Munich massacre during the 1972 Olympic Games, he was hunted by the Israeli Mossad during its assassination campaign.

In 1973, Mossad agents killed an innocent Moroccan waiter, Ahmed Bouchiki, in what became known as the Lillehammer affair in Norway, mistaking Bouchiki for Salameh, and resulting in the arrest of some of the Israeli agents.

As a result of the failure in Lillehammer and his alleged CIA protection, Salameh felt relatively safe.

Having lived under cover in various parts of the Middle East and Europe, in 1978 he married Georgina Rizk, a Lebanese celebrity who had been Miss Universe seven years earlier in 1971.

The couple spent their honeymoon in Hawaii and then stayed at Disneyland in California.

When Rizk became pregnant, she returned to her flat in Beirut where Salameh also rented a separate apartment.

Rizk was six months pregnant at the time of his death.

Their son Ali Salameh is a political science graduate who studied in Canada.

By a prior marriage he was a grandson-in-law of Mohammad Amin al-Husayni.

He had two sons from his first marriage to Um Hassan.

In June 1978, the Mossad intensified its efforts to assassinate Salameh, codenamed Operation Maveer (Burner).

Michael Harari was in charge of the operation.

A Lebanese agent working for Israeli military intelligence supplied key details on Salameh's routine.

Mossad operatives were subsequently deployed to Beirut to monitor Salameh, one of whom enrolled at the gym where he regularly exercised and befriended him.

As many as fourteen Mossad agents were involved in the operation.

One of the agents believed to be involved was Erika Chambers, who arrived in Beirut in October 1978 posing as an NGO staffer wishing to assist Palestinian orphans.

She rented a flat overlooking Salameh's apartment.

Two other agents involved in the operation using the aliases Peter Scriver and Roland Kolberg entered Lebanon on British and Canadian passports respectively.

From October 1978 over a period of six weeks, Mossad agents observed Salameh, noting that he spent most afternoons with Rizk at her apartment in Snoubra, West Beirut, and when not in meetings spent time at the gym and at a sauna.

An initial plan to kill him with a bomb attack at the sauna was vetoed for fear of excessive civilian casualties.

The Mossad decided to kill him with a car bomb.

Explosives were placed in the trunk of a Volkswagen which was then parked close to Salameh's apartment block.

He was assassinated in January 1979 as part of an assassination campaign by Mossad.

On 22 January 1979, Salameh was in a convoy of two Chevrolet station wagons headed from Rizk's flat to his mother's for a birthday party.

Chambers was on her balcony painting, with the Volkswagen parked below on Rue Verdun (an upscale commercial and residential street in Beirut).