Word: 1980s
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...Eastern violence his entire adult life, allegedly altering his features through plastic surgery, travelling on an Iranian diplomatic passport on unscheduled flights and never giving interviews or releasing video-taped statements. The only pictures of Mughniyah, 45, publicly available were a few grainy black and white snaps from the 1980s, portraying a serious, sallow-faced young man with a black pointed beard...
...organization rarely talked in public about Mughniyah and his alleged exploits from the 1980s. Sheikh Sobhi Tufayli, a founder of Hizballah who led the organization between 1989 and 1991, once told me that Mughniyah was innocent of the charges leveled against him by the U.S. "He had nothing to do with it," the gruff cleric said, then added "Besides do you think I would tell...
...true that the long international hunt for Mughniyah threw up many accusations about his misdeeds in the 1980s, but not much evidence has been produced to back them. Although he is alleged to have masterminded the suicide bomb spectaculars against U.S. targets in Lebanon in the mid-1980s and run the Beirut kidnapping networks that took dozens of foreigners hostage, the only crime for which he has been indicted by the U.S. is the hijacking of a TWA airliner in 1985 in which a U.S. navy diver was killed...
During the chaotic days of the 1980s, Mughniyah was able to travel with relative ease around the Middle East and even in Europe. In the mid-1980s, the CIA cut a deal with Lebanese military intelligence to fund a sophisticated listening post in the Lebanese mountains that could eavesdrop on conversations throughout the Middle East and was staffed by fluent Hebrew, French and Farsi speakers. In exchange, Lebanese intelligence was obliged to pass on any information gleaned about the kidnappers of Westerners. In 1986, Lebanese intelligence used a voice frequency sample to trace Mughniyah to a hotel in Paris...
...family in 1990. Damascus, therefore, seems an unlikely location for Mughniyah's enemies to catch up with him. "I always thought they would get him in Beirut, so what does it mean that he was killed in Damascus?" asked Robert Baer, a former CIA officer who tracked Mughniyah in 1980s Beirut and is also TIME's intelligence analyst...