Abu Mazen funded Munich Massacre

The Mastermind: Thirty years after he helped plan the terror strike, Abu Daoud remains in hiding -- and unrepentant

Following the Oslo Accords of 1993, the mastermind of Black September's Munich attack enjoyed a certain respectability. Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, a.k.a. Abu Daoud, sat on the Palestinian National Council, where in 1996 he joined a majority in voting to revoke the clause in the PLO charter calling for Israel's destruction. Though Israel had long known of his role at Munich -- Mossad was believed to have been involved in a 1981 assassination attempt in which he was shot six times -- he even carried an Israeli-issued VIP pass that allowed him to shuttle between his home in Amman, Jordan, and the occupied territories.

All that changed in 1999 after Abu Daoud openly acknowledged his role in the Olympic attack, both in his memoir, Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich, published in Paris, and in an interview with the Arab TV network al-Jazeera. Germany issued an international arrest warrant on Abu Daoud, and Israel canceled his travel credentials, barring him from the Palestinian lands he had spent his adult life trying to liberate. In the U.S., former senator Howard Metzenbaum (D., Ohio) -- who had watched the Munich crisis unfold on TV with his neighbors in suburban Cleveland, the parents of Israeli-American victim David Berger -- led a campaign to keep U.S. bookstores from stocking Abu Daoud's memoir. (Arcade, which owns the U.S. rights, still hasn't set a publication date for an English-language version of the book.)

In late July, SI's Don Yaeger went to the Middle East to find the 72-year-old Abu Daoud. After five days in Syria, where he met with leaders of several Palestinian groups, including the Palestinian Authority, PA president Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction and the militant Hamas, Yaeger received a call from Abu Daoud, who said he was in Cyprus. Abu Daoud, who would not reveal where he resides -- saying only that he lives with his wife on a pension provided by the PA -- agreed to answer written questions. Among his claims, in his memoir and to SI, are these:

Though he wasn't involved in conceiving or implementing it, "the [Munich] operation had the endorsement of Arafat." Arafat is not known to have responded to the allegations in Abu Daoud's book. In May 1972 four Black Septembrists hijacked a Sabena flight from Brussels to Tel Aviv, hoping to free comrades from Israeli jails. But Israeli special forces stormed the plane, killing or capturing all the terrorists and freeing every passenger, leaving Arafat, by Abu Daoud's account, desperate to boost morale in the refugee camps by showing that Israel was vulnerable.

Though he didn't know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack. Abu Mazen could not be reached for comment regarding Abu Daoud's allegation. After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. "Do you think that ... would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?" Abu Daoud writes. "I doubt it." Today the Bush Administration seeks a Palestinian negotiating partner "uncompromised by terror," yet last year Abu Mazen met in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The German assertion that the team's two senior commandos had infiltrated the Olympic Village in the weeks before the attack isn't true. Abu Daoud speculates that the Germans found this story useful, to make the attack seem like an inside job and divert attention from their poor security measures.

While he doesn't regret his role in the operation, Abu Daoud told SI, "I would be against any operation like Munich ever again. At the time, it was the correct thing to do for our cause. ... The operation brought the Palestinian issue into the homes of 500 million people who never previously cared about Palestinian victims at the hands of the Israelis." Today, he says, an attack on an event like the Olympics would only damage the Palestinians' image.

Call For Probe Of Abu Mazen's Role In The 1972 Black September Munich Olympic Massacre

(IsraelNN.com) The Israeli civil rights group Shurat Hadin has announced a campaign to convince US and German law enforcement agencies to open an investigation into the role of newly-appointed PA Prime Minister Abu Mazen in the massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany.

On September 5, 1972, a squad of heavily armed terrorists attacked the dormitories housing the Israeli Olympic team and murdered a coach and weight-lifter David Berger, who was an American citizen. The terrorists then took nine Israeli athletes hostage. While the terrorists and their hostages were transported to the airport, the German police botched a rescue attempt and all nine of the athletes were murdered.

The director of Shurat Hadin, attorney Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, sent letters this week to US President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder containing new information indicating that that Abu Mazen (whose given name is Mahmoud Abbas) provided financing to the PLO’s Black September terrorist group, in order to carry out the notorious terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympic Games.

While recent news media profiles of Abu Mazen have accentuated the PA leader’s alleged “terrorism-free” personal history, the Shurat Hadin charges that in 1972, Abu Mazen, then a high ranking PLO official, provided financing for the terrorist attacks being perpetrated by Yasser Arafat’s PLO faction Fatah under the nom de guerre "Black September."

Shurat Hadin is basing its information on published statements by the terrorist who masterminded the Munich attack, Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (“Abu Daoud”). In his French-language autobiography, "Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich," Abu Daoud describes the role of Abu Mazen in providing the funds to carry out the Black September Olympic attack.

Furthermore, in an interview with journalist Don Yaeger of Sports Illustrated Magazine in August 2002, Abu Daoud reiterated his charges that Abu Mazen supplied the money for the deadly attack.

In his memoir Abu Daoud states: “After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. "Do you think that ... would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?" Abu Daoud writes. "I doubt it."

"Today, the Bush Administration seeks a Palestinian negotiating partner 'uncompromised by terror,' yet last year Abu Mazen met in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell.”

Abu Daoud’s allegations have been confirmed by sources within the PA, according to Shurat Hadin.

Attorney Darshan-Leitner’s letter to President Bush states: “Under your leadership the United States has declared that it will no longer maintain contacts with those tainted by terrorist pasts. It appears that the new Palestinian leader, on whom the United States and Israel are now pinning their hopes, was also involved in murderous attacks perpetrated by the PLO’s Black September. If proven true, Abu Mazen’s role in the brutal killing of the Israeli athletes and American citizen David Berger must preclude his involvement in the negotiations between the United States, Israel and her Arab neighbors.”

Both Germany and Israel still have the legal jurisdiction to prosecute those involved in the Munich Olympic killings.

Black September? File:

Covering for Arafat the Killer
... it reached Khartoum, Cleo Noel and George Curtis Moore, our ambassador and charge
d'affaires, were murdered point blank by Black September, Arafat's hit men. ...
Cached -

CIA has tape of Arafat Ordering the Murder of Two American Diplomats

WorldNetDaily: Will real Arafat be exposed?

LET'S TALK WAR CRIMES
... in the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum. They were killed by Black September, Arafat's gunmen,
after President Nixon refused to release Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian ...
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USCFL - Frequently Asked Questions
... to move against King Hussein. That bloody day was known as Black September. Arafat
fled to the unsuspecting and friendly arms of the Lebanese people. Lebanon ...
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THE CONTRIVED MYTHS: of SABRA & SHATILLA; WAR IN LEBANON;

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