Imad Mughniyeh

Imad Fayez Mughniyeh (عماد فايز مغنية; 7 December 1962 – 12 February 2008), alias al-Hajj Radwan (الحاج رضوان), was a Lebanese militant leader who was the founding member of Lebanon's Islamic Jihad Organization and number two in Hezbollah's leadership.

Information about Mughniyeh is limited, but he is believed to have been Hezbollah's chief of staff and understood to have overseen Hezbollah's military, intelligence, and security apparatuses.

Mughniyeh was born in the village of Tayr Dibba, near Tyre, on 7 December 1962 to a family of poor farmers who harvested olives and lemons in the orchards of Lebanon's southern Shi'a heartland.

His father's name was Fayez.

For some time it was mistakenly thought that he was the son of Jawad (or Javad) Mughniyeh, a religious figure and author.

His birth date had also been given as July 1962.

Mughniyeh had two younger brothers, Jihad and Fouad.

About a decade after Mughniyeh's birth, his father moved the family to southern Beirut.

CIA South Group records state that Mughniyeh lived in Ayn Al-Dilbah, an impoverished neighborhood in South Beirut.

Mughniyeh is described as having been a popular boy and a "natural entertainer" who cracked jokes at family weddings and "worked the crowd with a confidence unusual for a youth his age."

Mughniyeh and his cousin Mustafa Badr Al Din became active in the Palestinian Fatah movement at an early age.

Mughniyeh was discovered by fellow Lebanese Ali Abu Hassan Deeb (who would later become a leader in Hezbollah) and quickly rose through the ranks of the movement.

In the mid-1970s, Mugniyeh organized the "Student Brigade," a unit of 100 young men which became part of Yasser Arafat's elite Force 17.

He was one of the main founders of Hezbollah in the 1980s.

He has been described as "a brilliant military tactician and very elusive".

He was often referred to as an ‘untraceable ghost’.

U.S. and Israeli officials have long accused Mughniyeh of being directly and personally involved in terrorist attacks which has resulted in many suicide bombings, murders, kidnappings, and assassinations.

The highest-profile attacks for which it is claimed he is responsible took place in the early 1980s, shortly after the founding of Hezbollah, when Mughniyeh was in his early twenties.

U.S. intelligence officials have accused him of killing more United States citizens than any other man prior to the September 11 attacks, and the bombings and kidnappings he is alleged to have organized are credited with all but eliminating and completely removing the US military presence in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Mughniyeh was known by his nom de guerre Al-Hajj Radwan.

Mughniyeh was included in the European Union's list of wanted terrorists and had a US$5 million bounty on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list.

To many in his home country, Lebanon and the Middle East, he’s seen to be a national symbol and hero.

Mughniyeh was a Shiite and deeply religious and was upset by the murder of the Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr in 1980 as well as a previous attempt by the Iraqi intelligence on the life of Lebanese Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah.

Fatah was formally in alliance with the Lebanese National Movement, which included the Lebanese pro-Iraqi branch of the Ba’th party.

Mughniyeh and some of his Lebanese Shiite comrades were forced to leave Fatah after engaging in armed confrontations with Ba’th party activists.

They had previously organized a body guard unit for Ayatollah Fadlallah and other Shiite clerics in Lebanon.

Mughniyeh accompanied Ayatollah Fadlallah on a Hajj pilgrimage in 1980 and thus earned his Hajj title.

Mughniyeh was briefly a student in the engineering department at the American University of Beirut.

Mughniyeh temporarily left Fatah in 1981 due to differences of opinion on the regime of Saddam Hussein.

After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he joined Fatah.

He participated in the defence of West Beirut, where he was wounded in the fighting.

After the withdrawal of PLO forces from Beirut in September 1982, Mughniyeh acquired an important position in the nascent resistance to the Israeli occupation, due to his knowledge of arms caches left behind by the Palestinians.

He remained a Fatah member during this period but also worked with other factions, such as the leftist Lebanese National Movement and Islamic resistance groups.

It began with the Beirut barracks bombing and US embassy bombings, both of which took place in 1983 and killed over 350, as well as the kidnapping of dozens of foreigners in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Mughniyeh remained a member of Fatah until 1984, when he joined the newly created Islamic Resistance of Hezbollah.

However, he remained close to Fatah leader Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) until the latter's assassination in 1988.

He was indicted in Argentina for his alleged role in the 1992 Israeli embassy attack in Buenos Aires.

He also remained deeply committed to the Palestine cause throughout his life and apparently founded the secret "Committee for Elimination of Israel" inside Hezbollah in 2000.

In later years, and especially after the Oslo accords, Mughniyeh and Hezbollah sided with the more militant Palestinian factions such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

As part of a joint CIA – Mossad operation, Mughniyeh was killed on the night of 12 February 2008 by a car bomb that was detonated as he passed by on foot, in the Kafr Sousa neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria.