Page 31 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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4———Abu Sayyaf Group

less than two years later, he moved the organization Further Reading
to Libya. This period, the mid-1980s, was the ANO’s
Melman, Yossi. The Master Terrorist: The True Story of
most active. The ANO carried out a campaign against
Abu-Nidal. New York: Adama Books, 1986.
Jordan, assassinating several Jordanian ambas- Nasr, Kameel B. Arab and Israeli Terrorism: The Causes
sadors. The ANO also attacked the counters of the and Effects of Political Violence, 1936-1993. Jefferson,
Israeli airline El Al at the Rome and Vienna airports NC: McFarland, 1997.
on December 27, 1985, killing 17 people and wound- Seale, Patrick. Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire. New York:
ing more than 100. On September 6, 1986, the ANO Random House, 1992.
massacred 22 worshippers at a synagogue in Istanbul, Steinberg, Matti. “The Radical Worldview of the Abu-Nidal
Turkey; on that same day ANO terrorists hijacked Faction.” Jerusalem Quarterly, No. 48, Fall 1988. http://
Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan, eventually www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=22, May
1, 2002.
massacring 22 people when negotiations failed.
During this period, the ANO began to recruit
more actively. Al-Banna, renowned for his paranoia,
began to worry that his underlings might be plotting ABU SAYYAF GROUP
to overthrow him. In 1989, two of his top deputies
accused him of massacring 150 of his own men in an
effort to forestall a coup. This internal dissention The Abu Sayyaf Group is a Muslim terrorist organi-
was magnified by the efforts of the Jordanian gov- zation based on Basilan Island, one of the southern
ernment to counter terrorism; some sources suggest islands in the Philippine archipelago. Since the mid-
that the Jordanian security forces threatened to kill 1990s, the group, whose origins are somewhat obscure,
members of al-Banna’s family if he did not stop his has carried out terrorist attacks in the Philippines,
campaign. These threats seriously affected the including a series of high-profile kidnappings in 2000
ANO’s ability to carry out attacks. After a July 1988 and 2001.
attack in Athens, Greece, in which nine people were For centuries, the southern Philippines have had a
killed, the only major attack attributed to the ANO substantial Muslim population. Sixteenth-century
has been the 1991 assassination of Abu Iyad, a for- Spanish colonizers spread Christianity to the northern
mer colleague of al-Banna and a high-ranking islands, treating the Muslims as a despised minority;
figure within the PLO. the area has seen periodic violence ever since. Its
During the 1990s, state support for the ANO— people are among the poorest in the country. In the early
which was the organization’s major source of 1970s, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)
funds—declined rapidly in response to that decade’s began a war of secession against the Philippine govern-
apparent progress in bringing peace to the Middle ment. Although the fortunes of the MNLF and its splin-
East. By the end of the 1990s, al-Banna was forced to ter group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF),
leave Libya. In 1999, he was reported to be in Cairo, have risen and fallen over the past 30 years, violence
Egypt, receiving medical treatment. In the latest twist and lawlessness have been a constant in the southern
in the ANO’s convoluted history, at the time of this islands. Defections, desertions, and ideological disputes
writing he is believed to have left Cairo and returned have resulted in many armed bands roaming the islands.
to Iraq at the invitation of Saddam Hussein. Given Abu Sayyaf began as one such band of former
the ANO’s inactivity over the past decade, and guerrillas, led by Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalania, a
al-Banna’s declining health, the organization may be charismatic former Islamic scholar who had fought
finished as an active terrorist group. However, it is as against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Abu Sayyaf means
yet unknown whether al-Banna’s return to the land “Bearer of the Sword.” The group first came to light
that gave his group the ANO birth will spark a resur- about 1994; at that time, it was thought to be a small
gence. In August 2002, al-Banna was found dead splinter faction of the MILF. Most observers now con-
of multiple gunshot wounds in an apartment in sider it to be an entirely independent group. Early in
Baghdad. its existence Abu Sayyaf established connections with
international Muslim terrorist organizations, includ-
See also AL ’ASIFA; HIJACKING; SADDAM HUSSEIN; PAN AM ing Al Qaeda, and members may have received train-
FLIGHT 73 HIJACKING ing and support from these groups.