Hezbollah Page 8

  Six days after the attacks the Kuwaiti government accused twelve Shi’a—nine Iraqis and three Lebanese—of playing a role in the plot. Abdul Aziz Hussein, then Kuwait’s minister of state for cabinet affairs, identified all twelve as Dawa members, including the operative who drove the explosives-laden truck into the US embassy compound, Raad Mouchbil.117 The discovery of one of Mouchbil’s thumbs—the sole piece of his body still intact following the explosion—provided just enough evidence for Kuwaiti authorities to apprehend, and eventually try, some of his accomplices.118

  While the bombings appear to have been orchestrated by Dawa, the group had called on the expertise of the three arrested Lebanese operatives. One, Hussein al-Sayed Yousef al-Musawi, was the first cousin of Husayn al-Musawi, leader of Islamic Amal (which merged with Hezbollah).119 Another was Mustapha Badreddine, Imad Mughniyeh’s brother-in-law and cousin, who was in Kuwait under the Christian-sounding cover name Fuad Saab. The last was Azam Khalil Ibrahim.120

  In total twenty-five suspects were charged (four in absentia).121 Ultimately they were charged with “belonging to a group bent on demolishing the basic values of society through criminal means,” charges diluted significantly from the initial accusations of membership in the banned Dawa organization or practicing terrorism.122 Despite multiple references to “another state,” the charges made no explicit mention of Iran.123 For its part, Iran denied any involvement in the plots, insisting that “attribution of these attacks to Iran is part and parcel of a comprehensive plot by the United States of America and its agents against the Islamic revolution.”124

  After a six-week trial the court handed down six death sentences (three in absentia), seven life sentences, and seven sentences of five to ten years in jail. Excepting the five found not guilty and the three convicted in absentia, seventeen convicted terrorists were jailed in Kuwait—thus the moniker “the Kuwait 17,” or the “Dawa 17.”125 Mughniyeh and the IJO would spend the next few years carrying out kidnappings, hijackings, and other attacks aimed at securing the release of the Kuwait 17, Badreddine in particular. When a Kuwaiti court sentenced Badreddine to death in March 1984, Hezbollah threatened to kill some of its hostages if the sentence was carried out (it was not).126 Discussing prospects for the release of US hostages, a CIA memo noted that “Mughniyeh has always linked the fate of his American hostages to release of 17 Shia terrorists in Kuwait, and we have no indication he has altered this demand.”127

  “Wild, Wild West Beirut”

  By the spring of 1985, US intelligence described West Beirut’s transformation from a commercial and cultural hub of the Arab world—the Paris of the Middle East—into “a lawless militarized zone contested by confessional and ideological factions.” The CIA titled an analytical report on the subject Wild, Wild West Beirut, noting that “turf battles, terrorism, rampant street crime, and the lack of central authority have made the city extremely dangerous for both local residents and foreigners.”128

  Hezbollah’s successful expansion from the Bekaa Valley into Beirut, at Amal’s expense, enabled the group to carry out kidnappings and other plots in the city with greater ease. Hezbollah gunmen had become so comfortable in the city that they were notorious for harassing women wearing Western-style clothing and raiding restaurants that served alcohol. Noting the lack of security, poor economic conditions, prospects of unemployment, and social alienation facing many young Lebanese men, especially in the Shi’a communities, intelligence analysts correctly assessed that “the strength of the Hezbollah fundamentalists in West Beirut is likely to grow.”129

  Against this backdrop, the Western hostage crisis stretched on until 1992, with Westerners and, on occasion, other foreigners being abducted in stages that, in retrospect, can be loosely tied to specific Hezbollah causes. Magnus Ranstorp breaks down the Western hostage crisis into nine stages, starting with Hezbollah’s expansion from the Bekaa Valley into Beirut and southern Lebanon and its terrorist operations aimed at ridding the country of foreign forces and ending with the release of the last American hostages, a closer relationship with Iran based on converging interests, and the election of Hassan Nasrallah as secretary-general. Each of these periods focused on some particular goal, though certain themes—like securing the freedom of Shi’a militants jailed abroad or kicking Israeli and Western forces out of Lebanon—remained constant. For example, the abduction of CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley in March 1984, as well as several other kidnappings in the second half of 1984, was a direct response to the arrest and sentencing of the Kuwait 17 bombers.130

  To be sure, some kidnappings were carried out by Hezbollah factions or clans—each with its own alias—in an opportunistic fashion to secure, for example, the release of a jailed relative. Others involved poorly trained muscle to grab people off the streets; several people were kidnapped because they were mistaken for American or French citizens. Captors assigned to guard the Western prisoners were often “unsophisticated but fanatic Muslims,” as one captive put it.131 In contrast, the abduction of William Buckley indicated careful target selection and operational surveillance, likely supported by Iranian intelligence. According to one account, some of the intelligence Hezbollah used to identify Buckley as the local CIA chief was provided by Iran based on materials seized during the US embassy takeover in Iran in 1979.132

  As for Buckley, he was sent to Beirut in 1983 to set up a new CIA station after the previous one had been decimated in the April US embassy bombing.133 His kidnapping was a devastating blow to the CIA. “Bill Buckley being taken basically closed down CIA intelligence activities in the country,” commented one senior CIA official.134 But the CIA had adequate sources to determine within six months that Hezbollah was holding Buckley.135 For CIA director William Casey, finding Buckley was an absolute priority, the CIA official added. “It drove him almost to the ends of the earth to find ways of getting Buckley back, to deal with anyone in any form, in any shape, in any way, to get Buckley back. He failed at that, but it was a driving motivation in Iran-Contra. We even dealt with the devil … the Iranians, who sponsored Hezbollah, who sponsored the kidnapping and eventual murder of Bill Buckley.”136

  A year after Buckley’s abduction, Hezbollah kidnapped American journalist Terry Anderson, with Islamic Jihad claiming responsibility in a call to a Western press agency. The caller issued a “final warning to foreigners in the Lebanese capital against involving themselves in subversive activities.” Like Buckley’s, this kidnapping was clearly planned. Anderson was with an Associated Press (AP) photographer at the time of his abduction, but only he was taken. In addition, Anderson had been followed by a green Mercedes for two days prior to the kidnapping, suggesting he had been subjected to preoperational surveillance. The Islamic Jihad claim of responsibility was ultimately confirmed by the CIA, proving somewhat of an embarrassment for Hezbollah. Despite their earlier surveillance, the kidnappers were apparently unaware that Anderson had interviewed Sheikh Fadlallah at his home earlier that day. Fadlallah told the AP he considered the kidnapping a matter of “my own honor,” suggesting that his hosting of the reporter would have precluded his initiating or approving of his abduction.137 After 2,454 days in captivity, Anderson was ultimately released in December 1991.

  Frustrated with its inability to achieve its goals through hijackings and kidnappings, Hezbollah sent pictures of six hostages to several Beirut newspapers in May 1985. “All of the hostages in the photographs looked fairly healthy,” the CIA noted, “except U.S. embassy political officer Buckley who has been held longer than any of the others.”138 A year after Buckley’s capture, the agency was still fiercely protective of his cover—even in its own, classified reporting—for fear that revealing his CIA affiliation would cause him harm. This assessment was right except that Hezbollah already knew he was a CIA official—indeed, this was why he was targeted. Buckley was tortured, reportedly by both Lebanese and Iranian interrogators.139 Hezbollah reportedly sent three different videotapes of Buckley being tortured to the CIA, one more
harrowing than the next.140 Another hostage, David Jacobsen, later recounted that Buckley occupied a cell separated from his own by a thin wall. “It was apparent that he was very sick. I could hear him retching between coughs.” Another hostage held with the two men recalled Buckley hallucinating. Once, in the bathroom, Buckley apparently announced, “I’ll have my hot cakes with blueberry syrup now.”141

  By some accounts Buckley was moved through the Bekaa Valley and transferred to Iran; others say he was buried in an unmarked grave in Lebanon.142 Islamic Jihad announced it had killed Buckley in October 1985, but fellow hostages would later reveal he had died months earlier as a result of the torture he endured, possibly at the hands of Imad Mughniyeh himself.143

  Once taken hostage, American, French, and British citizens were held for an average of 782 days.144 The first few months of captivity were generally spent in total isolation, with hostages reportedly chained to a wall or a bed and blindfolded. Some former hostages said they had been beaten. They also reported very poor sanitary conditions, with cells located in the cellars of houses in Dahiya in the southern Shi’a suburb of Beirut, or in the Sheikh Abdallah barracks near Baalbek. Captives were frequently transferred from one location to another, hidden in coffins for the journey to prevent their discovery and rescue.145

  Not all kidnapping plots went smoothly. On September 30, 1985, four Soviet diplomats were taken hostage in Beirut in an attempt to pressure the Soviet Union to end pro-Syrian activity against an Islamic movement in Tripoli, evacuate its Beirut embassy, and retract all Soviet citizens from Lebanon’s capital.146 In response to these demands, levied by Islamic Jihad and the so-called Islamic Liberation Organization, more than half of the Soviet diplomatic staff withdrew from Beirut over the course of a month.147 During that time one of the Soviet hostages was shot in the head and his body dumped near a stadium in West Beirut.148 In response, the KGB reportedly mobilized its clandestine Alpha counterterrorism unit and, with the help of local Druze informants, identified the Hezbollah kidnappers, their clans, and their families.149 From this point on, accounts of the secretive operation vary, though each reveals the KGB’s merciless efforts to retrieve the three remaining Soviet hostages.

  In one retelling, the KGB kidnapped a relative of the hostage-taking organization’s chief, cut off the relative’s ear, and sent it to his family.150 In another, the Alpha unit abducted one of the kidnapper’s brothers and sent two of his fingers home to his family in separate envelopes.151 Still another version has the Soviet operatives kidnapping a dozen Shi’a, one of whom was the relative of a Hezbollah leader. The relative was castrated and shot in the head, his testicles stuffed in his mouth, and his body shipped to Hezbollah with a letter promising a similar fate for the eleven other Shi’a captives if the three Soviet hostages were not released.152 The final scene could not have been better scripted: “That evening, the three diplomats, emaciated, unshaven, barefoot, and wearing dirty track suits, appeared at the gates of the Soviet embassy.”153 Never again would Hezbollah or any other militant Shi’a group target Soviet officials in Lebanon. As for the Islamic Liberation Organization, the group never resurfaced, feeding suspicions that it never existed in the first place.154

  “Hezbollah has a notorious history of taking Western hostages during Beirut’s civil war,” the FBI summarized in a 1994 report. “Between 1982 and 1991, Hezbollah abducted and held at least 44 Western hostages, including 17 U.S. persons, three of whom died while in captivity.” By the time this report was written, Hezbollah had moved on to more spectacular terrorist operations, often well beyond Lebanon’s borders. “Hezbollah leaders now believe that taking Western hostages is counterproductive,” the FBI noted, adding the caveat that “certain elements within the group continue to argue for the resumption of the kidnappings.”155

  Kuwait in the Crosshairs

  Many Western hostages were kidnapped for reasons unrelated to the fate of the Kuwait 17, but the Kuwait 17 would play a major role in the expansion of Hezbollah’s focus from foreign elements in Lebanon to Western interests far beyond Lebanon’s borders. Those attacks, especially in the early 1980s, were conducted at Iran’s behest—such as the Kuwait bombings or attacks in Europe (see chapter 3). And the resulting capture of many of these Hezbollah operatives only led the group to carry out more international attacks in an effort to punish those countries and seek their operatives’ release.

  Such logic applied to the Hezbollah hijacking of Kuwait Airways flight 221 from Kuwait to Karachi, Pakistan, via Dubai—a flight that was diverted to Tehran. On December 3, 1984, four armed hijackers easily slipped through security at Dubai International Airport, where Britain’s Princess Ann was scheduled to depart the same morning and security was busy ensuring her timely departure. No more than fifteen minutes into the journey, a group of young men commandeered the Kuwait Airways flight and took its 162 passengers hostage, including three American auditors employed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).156 One of the USAID employees was shot dead after the plane landed in Tehran. “Minutes after the shooting was heard,” Iran’s news agency reported, “the main door was opened and the half-dead body of one of the passengers was thrown out.” Once on the tarmac, the body was shot twice more.157 Forty-four passengers were released in Tehran, where the hijackers demanded the release of the Kuwait 17, who, they insisted, had been tortured by “the joint butchering machine” of Kuwait, the United States, and France.158 Despite the hijackers’ threats to destroy the aircraft if their demands were ignored, the Kuwaiti government refused to accede.159 Three days into the standoff the captors murdered another American and dumped his body on the tarmac as well. The man was so badly disfigured that Swiss officials had trouble identifying him despite the detailed information American officials had passed on about the four US citizens on board.160

  Surviving passengers described how the hijackers singled out the Americans and Kuwaitis on board and were particularly abusive toward the Americans. Not only were the Americans separated from the rest of the passengers, moved to the first-class section, and bound to their seats, but they were forced to lie on their backs as the hijackers stood on them and shouted anti-American slogans. They were interrogated with lit cigarette butts held to their face and hands, and threatened with pistols held to their heads.161 As the crisis entered its sixth day, Iranian police seized control of the plane, arrested the Hezbollah operatives, and freed the remaining captives. But the rescue was apparently a farce, engineered by Iran to give the hijackers a way out. In fact, authorities “suspected that the hijackers were acting in league with leading members of the Iranian regime.”162

  A US official explained that the plan for the rescue—sending Iranian agents onto the plane disguised as a cleaning crew that the hijackers had requested—was puzzling, to say the least. “You do not invite cleaners aboard an airplane after you have planted explosives, promised to blow up the plane and read your last will and testament,” he said. “That is patently absurd.”163 The fact that the Iranian team was so sure of its success—the members entered through only one door and tossed so many smoke bombs that no one could see whether or not the hijackers showed any sign of resistance—led the head of the US State Department’s counterterrorism office to conclude, “We feel there is a great deal of sympathy [for the hijackers], if not support and active collusion, on the part of the Iranian government.”164 In the end the Hezbollah hijackers escaped despite requests for their extradition to Kuwait, and the Kuwait 17 remained in prison.165

  Undeterred, Hezbollah struck again one year later, this time against a far more sensitive target: the Kuwaiti emir himself. On the morning of May 25, 1985, an explosives-filled car rammed into Sheikh Jaber Ahmad al-Sabah’s royal motorcade as it traveled to his office from the residential palace. The attack, which struck the convoy’s lead car carrying security personnel instead of its desired target, killed two of the emir’s bodyguards and a pedestrian and injured twelve others, including Sheikh Jaber, who suffered only minor lacer
ations.166 The driver of the car bomb, believed to be an Iraqi Dawa member working with Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad, apparently waited at a gas station along the procession route and rammed a limousine into the motorcade as it passed by. Within hours an anonymous caller to a Western press agency in Beirut claimed Islamic Jihad was behind the attack: “We hope the Emir has received our message: we ask one more time for the release of those held or all the thrones of the Gulf will be shaken.”167

  Three years later on April 5, 1988, Hezbollah operatives hijacked Kuwait Airways flight 422, which was carrying 111 passengers from Bangkok to Kuwait. The hijackers redirected the plane to land in Mashhad, Iran, and issued their by-now familiar demand: the release of the Kuwait 17.168 Fifty-seven passengers were released over the next three days before the plane departed for Larnaca, Cyprus.169 Four days into the hijacking the assailants shot a Kuwaiti passenger when their deadline for having the plane refueled passed. Another Kuwaiti passenger was then released as a goodwill gesture, which reportedly led Cypriot authorities to allow the Hezbollah operatives and the remaining passengers to fly out of Cypriot airspace.170 They flew to Algiers, where negotiations among the hijackers, Kuwaiti officials, and the Algerian government took place over eight days.171 On April 20, fifteen days after the initial flight from Bangkok was commandeered, the last passengers were freed. And still the Kuwait 17 remained in jail.172

  Despite the many terrorist attacks Hezbollah executed in an effort to secure the release of the Kuwait 17, the Kuwaiti government never shortened the sentences of the convicted terrorists behind the 1983 bombings. Nor, however, did the Kuwaiti emir ever sign the six death sentences, so the convicts sat in jail.173 Two served out their sentences and were released in 1989. The others escaped in the tumult of the Iraqi invasion in 1990. Even then, the Western hostage crisis persisted for more than a year longer.