Jibril, Ahmed (1937?–)

Ahmed Jibril is the militant Palestinian leader of the Syrian-sponsored terrorist group, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP–GC). He is a master bomb maker and is considered by many to be one of the most dangerous terrorists of the late 20th century.

It is believed that Jibril was born in Yazur, south of Tel Aviv, although some accounts list his birthplace as Ramallah or even Syria. In any case, his family later moved to Syria, and Jibril joined the Syrian Army in 1956, rising to the rank of captain before being expelled as a troublemaker and suspected Communist in 1958. Jibril briefly worked with Yasir Arafat's Fatah movement in its early days, but left to cofound the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF). With Syrian support, the PLF carried out assassinations as well as multiple terror attacks against Israel. Jibril served as a commander and became particularly known for training others in terror techniques.

In 1967, Jibril and George Habash formed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Jibril soon broke away from the group, however, as tensions developed between Syria and Habash. In 1968, Jibril founded the separate, pro-Syrian group PFLP–General Command, claiming that fighting, not politics, was the way to achieve Palestinian goals.

The PFLP–GC carried out many attacks and kidnappings during the 1970s and 1980s, including the 1970 bombing of Swissair Flight 330, and numerous attacks on Israeli civilian targets such as school buses and apartment buildings. In May 1985, Jibril negotiated with Israel for the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for three Israeli soldiers the PFLP–GC had taken hostage while fighting in Lebanon. The trade became known as the “Jibril exchange.”

Jibril also orchestrated Operation Kibya, referred to as Night of the Hang Gliders. On November 25, 1987, four heavily armed PFLP members hang-glided into Israeli territory. Three of the terrorists experienced mechanical problems and did not get far, but the fourth, Khaled Aker, managed to penetrate the Israeli Defense Force's Camp Gibor and kill six soldiers before being shot himself. The spectacular attack made a terror icon of Jibril and inspired the first intifada (“throwing off”), a period of intense violence against Israel. The Night of the Hang Gliders has such symbolic weight that the Israeli military traditionally makes a point of striking PFLP–GC targets every November 25.

The explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, struck many intelligence officials as the work of Jibril and the PFLP–GC. From his Damascus headquarters, Jibril denied any involvement. However, the type of bomb used appeared to investigators to be a Jibril trademark, leading many to suspect that Jibril had, at the very least, trained the bombers. Investigators thought it more likely still that Jibril had orchestrated the entire attack, possibly as revenge for the 1988 downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by the United States. Scotland later indicted two employees of Libyan Arab Airlines for the Pan Am attack, in which a total of 270 people died.

In 1989, during the international uproar about Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, Jibril told the press that he and his group were ready to murder Rushdie for heresy as called for by Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Rumors abound that Jibril has been experiencing health problems since the early 1990s; this, along with a concerted effort by the Israeli military to eliminate the PFLP–GC, seems to have led the group to scale back its activity in recent years. Nonetheless, the U.S. State Department has listed the PFLP–GC as an active terrorist organization in its most recent report on global terrorism.

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