Wadie Haddad

Wadie Haddad
وديع حداد‎
Haddad in Syria, c. 1970
Born	1927 Safed, British Mandate for Palestine
Died	28 March 1978 (aged 50–51) East Berlin, German Democratic Republic
Nationality	Palestinian
Other names	Abu Hani (ابو هاني)
Alma mater	American University of Beirut
Years active	1951–1978
Employer	KGB
Organization	PFLP–EO

Wadie Haddad (Arabic: وديع حداد; 1927 – 28 March 1978), also known as Abu Hani, was a Palestinian militant. He led the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He organized several hijackings of international civilian passenger aircraft in the 1960s and 1970s, the most infamous of which was the Entebbe hijacking, when Palestinian/German militants under his command held 106 hostages — both Israelis and non-Israeli Jews — on a flight from Israel to France after diverting it to Uganda.

Early life and education

Haddad was born into a family of Palestinian Christians (Greek Orthodox) in the city of Safed in 1927. His home was destroyed during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, prompting him to flee to Lebanon as a Palestinian refugee. He received a degree in medicine from the American University of Beirut, where he met fellow Palestinian refugee George Habash, who was also a medical student. Together, they helped found the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), a political organization of pan-Arabists who sought to dismantle Israel and unite the world's Arab countries.

After graduating, he relocated with Habash to Amman, Jordan, where they established a medical clinic. He worked with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in 1956, but was arrested by Jordanian authorities in the following year due to his nationalist activities. In 1961, he managed to escape to Syria. From 1963 onwards, Haddad became a proponent of armed struggle against Israel and succeeded in militarizing the ANM.

Role in the PFLP

After the 1967 Six-Day War, the Palestinian wing of the ANM transformed into the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist formation, under the leadership of Habash. Haddad became the leader of the military wing of the group, involved in organizing attacks on Israeli targets. He helped plan the first PFLP aircraft hijacking in 1968, when an Israeli El Al plane was hijacked. He argued for and organized hijackings, despite criticism against the PFLP from within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

The Dawson's Field hijackings of 1970, when PFLP members including Leila Khaled brought three passenger jets to Jordan, helped provoke the bloody fighting of Black September. After the expulsion of the PLO factions from Jordan, Haddad was subjected to harsh criticism from the PFLP, which was in turn under pressure from the rest of the PLO. Haddad was ordered not to attack targets outside of Israel, but he continued operations under the name of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations (PFLP-EO). Haddad was expelled from the organization PFLP in 1973.

He also employed the services of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as "Carlos the Jackal", whom he had met in 1970 and trained in guerrilla warfare techniques. Haddad decided to expel Sánchez from his team after Sánchez had been accused of refusing to kill two hostages, and possibly stealing ransom money, following the 1975 assault on the OPEC conference in Vienna. Haddad organized the Entebbe hijacking in June 1976.

During this time he was also friends with Swiss neo-Nazi, ODESSA facilitator, and former Abwehr agent, Francois Genoud.

Death

Haddad died on 28 March 1978 in East Germany, reportedly from leukemia. According to the book Striking Back, published by Aaron J. Klein in 2006, Haddad was killed by Mossad, which had sent the chocolate-loving Haddad Belgian chocolates coated with a slow-acting and undetectable poison which caused him to die several months later.

According to the 2018 book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman, the Mossad killed Haddad by poisoning his toothpaste. On 10 January 1978, a deep-cover Mossad agent with a high level of access to Haddad's home and office switched his regular tube of toothpaste for an identical tube containing a toxin that had been developed at the Israel Institute for Biological Research. Some of the toxin penetrated the mucus membranes of his mouth and entered his bloodstream every time he brushed his teeth. Haddad became ill and was admitted to an Iraqi government hospital, where the doctors could not figure out what his condition was and suspected he had been poisoned. Upon Yasser Arafat's request, he was flown to East Germany to be hospitalized at a prestigious hospital which treated members of the intelligence and security communities, where he was admitted under the pseudonym of Ahmed Doukli. The tube of lethal toothpaste was included in a bag of toiletries his aides packed for him when he was taken to East Germany. He was extensively tested and the physicians suspected he had been poisoned with either rat poison or thallium, but found no direct evidence. His condition continued to deteriorate. According to intelligence provided by an Israeli agent in East Germany, Haddad's screams of pain were heard throughout the hospital and he had to be heavily dosed with tranquilizers and sedatives. Haddad died ten days after his arrival there.

What remained of the PFLP-EO dissolved after his death, but in the process inaugurated the 15 May Organization and the PFLP-SC.

Ties to the Soviet KGB

According to Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior KGB archivist who defected to the UK in 1992, in early 1970 Haddad was recruited by the KGB as an agent, codenamed NATIONALIST. Thereafter, in deep secrecy the Soviets helped to fund and arm the PFLP. The KGB had warning of its major operations and almost certainly sanctioned the most significant, such as the September 1970 hijackings. Haddad remained a highly valued agent till his death in 1978.

A letter by KGB chairman Yuri Andropov to Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader and head of the Communist Party, about the covert transfer of arms to the PFLP refers to Haddad as a "trusted KGB intelligence agent". The letter and two other highly classified documents from the CPSU Central Committee archive were located and secretly copied by Vladimir Bukovsky in 1992.

Further reading

• Bassam Abu Sharif; Uzi Mahnaimi (1995). The Best of Enemies: The Memoirs of Bassam Abu-Sharif and Uzi Mahnaimi. ISBN 0-316-00401-4.