Ali Hassan Salameh (1940-22 January 1979), also known as "The Red Prince", was the leader of the Black September Organization, and was the man responsible for the Munich Massacre, Khartoum Embassy attack, and other attacks on Israel. He was assassinated in 1979 by Israel's Mossad.
Biography[]
Ali Hassan Salameh was born in 1940 in Qula, Mandatory Palestine, and was the son of Hassan Salameh, a wealthy Muslim sheikh who led resistance to the United Kingdom and the Jews. In 1948, his father was killed during the Israeli War of Independence by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Salameh was educated in Germany and received military training in Cairo, Egypt and Moscow, Soviet Union. Known for flaunting his wealth, driving sports cars, and being surrounded by women, Salameh was nicknamed "The Red Prince", and had a very popular appeal among Palestinian young men.
Later, Salameh was made Secretary Chief of Fatah, the leading part of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the dominant Palestinian freedom fighting organization. He later founded the Black September Organization, a Palestinian terrorist group that used terrorism against its enemies of Israel and the United States. During the 1972 Olympic Games, Salameh had a team of eight terrorists kidnap the Israeli Olympic team of 11 athletes and coaches and killed them all after German police failed to rescue them, in what became known as the Munich Massacre. During Operation Wrath of God, Israel's Mossad intelligence agency went after 11 targets, including Salameh. Salameh evaded capture several times, but many of the targets were successfully taken out.
In 1973, Israel chased a false lead and killed waiter Ahmed Bouchiki in Lillehammer, Norway, whom they believed was Salameh. In London, they attempted to assassinate him again, but drunken Americans (working for the CIA and acting as Salameh's protectors; Salameh was protected and funded by the United States in exchange for not attacking diplomats) stopped the attempt by blocking the path of assassin leader Avner Kaufman as Salameh and his bodyguards left in a taxi. In Spain, a third assassination attempt on 11 November 1974 during a night party at his Tarifa beach house failed after his armed guards intervened after one was killed, and the Mossad team sent to assassinate him already lost three members.
Salameh did not go into hiding, and he enjoyed a lavish lifestyle. He married Lebanese 1971 Miss Universe Georgina Rizk in Hawaii and stayed at Disneyland in California, both in the USA. He was protected by the USA and did not harm US citizens, and he also maintained good relations with the United States (protecting US citizens in Beirut, Lebanon) in hopes of securing their support for Palestinian terrorism. Despite this, Black September killed a few US officials in an attack on the embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, where they demanded the release of Sirhan Sirhan, Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, and several Palestinian prisoners.
Death[]
In November 1978, Mossad agent Erika Chambers came to Beirut, Lebanon on a 1975 British passport. Also, Mossad agents Peter Scriver and Roland Kolberg arrived in Beirut with British and Canadian passports, and many more agents also arrived. Chambers was supposedly a British citizen who supported Palestinian refugee welfare organizations, and came to the Middle East to support them. On 10 January 1979 she paid 3,500 Lebanese pounds to rent an apartment down Beka Street, where Salameh stayed. She rescued stray cats and painted scenes from Beirut on her balcony, and while working with a charity, she met Salameh. Salameh took her to various functions, taking a liking to her, and Chambers found out his daily routine.
On 22 January 1979, Salameh left Rizk's apartment in a convoy of two Chevrolet station wagons to attend his mother's birthday party. On 3:35 PM, as Salameh's convoy turned onto Rue Madame Curie from below Chambers' apartment on Rue Verdun, Chambers notified the Mossad agents from her balcony, where she was painting. 100 kilograms of explosives were detonated, and Salameh had a piece of steel shrapnel embedded in his head, mortally wounded. He was treated at the American University Hospital, but at 4:03 PM, he died on the operating table. 9 people were killed in the blast: Salameh, four bodyguards, a West German nun, a British secretary, and two other civilians. At Salameh's funeral, Yasser Arafat eulogized him, saying, "we will continue to march on the road to Palestine. Goodbye, my hero." 20,000 Palestinians attended his private funeral ceremony.