Word: awad
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Afraid the Americans might not help him, Awad frantically insisted that he was telling the truth. He drew a diagram of the suitcase, showing where thin sheets of plastic explosive were sewn into the lining and how the batteries and detonator were embedded in a sheet of plastic along the bottom edge of the suitcase. The diplomat reluctantly called the Swiss police again and talked them into sending the bomb squad back to Awad's hotel. Several tense hours ) passed. Finally, a call came through: the Swiss had found the bomb...
That was just the beginning of Awad's coming in from the cold. As he related his story to the Americans and the Swiss, then to Israeli, German and other officials in Bern, it became clear that he held the key to a major terrorist mystery. Just three weeks earlier, a bomb had exploded on a Pan Am jet flying from Tokyo to Hawaii; it killed a Japanese teenager and injured 15 other passengers. That bomb too was made of plastic explosive. It had easily passed through security checks designed to detect metal weapons and stop hijackings rather than bombings...
...this the bomber's telltale "signature"? Investigators thought the bomb was planted by a man who occupied the seat under which it exploded but who got off in Tokyo, before the fatal leg of the journey. But who was the man? And where had he come from? Awad's evidence would put the pieces together. Based on his debriefing, the U.S. government undertook an eight-year investigation that ultimately implicated the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in anti-American terrorism...
...Awad's involvement with Rashid began in Baghdad. A former captain in the Syrian army, Awad had knocked around the Persian Gulf for a few years before he and one of his brothers settled down in Iraq. By 1982 he had his own construction firm and a lucrative contract to lay foundations for a string of warehouses at Baghdad's military airport. Early that year he met a handsome 30-year-old expatriate from Jerusalem named Mohammed Rashid. Awad knew Rashid was with the fedayeen -- freedom fighters -- but that was not unusual among Palestinians. Awad would go on picnics with...
...Rashid introduced Awad to someone new: a short, tough-looking, energetic man with the strong, deep voice of someone used to giving orders. It was Rashid's boss -- Abu Ibrahim, also known as Husayn al-Umari, the 46-year- old chief of the May 15 Organization. The date was June 6, 1982 -- the very day Israel invaded Lebanon. That afternoon as the expatriates sat in Rashid's living room watching the bloody assault unfold on television, Abu Ibrahim turned to Awad and asked angrily whether Palestinians like him were willing to help their country or only cared about making money...