"...Mughniyeh, a Shiite Muslim not known to be
connected to the Sunni al-Qaida or Taliban, harkened back to an earlier
era of terror — a secretive, underground operator who was one of the
first to turn Islamic militancy's weapons against the United States in
the 1980s but whose name was not even known until years later.
He
emerged during the turmoil of Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, rising to
become Hezbollah's security chief, and the dramatic suicide
bombings he is accused of engineering in Beirut were some of the
deadliest against Americans until al-Qaida's Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
...Mughniyeh, born on Dec. 7, 1962, in the south
Lebanon village of Tair Debba, joined the nascent Hezbollah in the
early 1980s and formed a militant cell known as Islamic Jihad, or
Islamic Holy War, said to be Hezbollah's strike arm though the group
denies any link to it.
He is accused of
masterminding the first major suicide bombing to target Americans: the
April 1983 car bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 63
people, including 17 Americans. He is also blamed for a more
devastating attack that came six months later, when suicide attackers
detonated truck bombs at the barracks of French and U.S. peacekeeping
forces in Beirut, killing 59 French paratroopers and 241 American
Marines.
He was indicted in the United States
for the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, during which Shiite militants
shot Navy diver Robert Stethem, who was a passenger on the plane, and
dumped his body on the tarmac of Beirut airport. The hijacking produced
one of the most iconic images of pre-9/11 terrorism, a photo of the
jet's pilot leaning out the cockpit window with a gunman waving a
pistol in front of his face.
In the 1980s
Mughniyeh was also believed to have directed a string of kidnappings of
Americans and other foreigners in Lebanon, including the Associated
Press's chief Mideast correspondent Terry Anderson — who was held for
six years until his release in 1991 — and CIA station chief William
Buckley, who was tortured by his captors and killed in 1985.
...Israel accused Mughniyeh of involvement in the
1992 bombing of its embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina in which 29
people were killed.
Argentine special
prosecutor Alberto Nisman also accused Mughniyeh in the 1994 bombing of
a Buenos Aires Jewish center that killed 85 people. Prosecutors said
Iranian officials orchestrated the attack and entrusted Hezbollah to
carry it out.
Western intelligence also links him to Khobar Towers bombing, the Western official said."