:en:Ali Hassan Salameh

Salameh was born in the Palestinian town of Qula, near the city of Jaffa, to a wealthy family on 1 April 1941.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TGAEDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT83|script-title=ar:موسوعة المصطلحات والمفاهيم الفلسطينية|date=1 January 2011|publisher=دار الجليل للنشر والدراسات والأبحاث الفلسطينية |trans-title=Encyclopedia of Palestinian Terms and Concepts |language=ar |page=83}} He was the son of Shaykh Hassan Salameh, who was killed in action by the Israeli army during the 1948 Palestine war near Lydda. Ali Salameh was educated in Germany and is thought to have received his military training in Cairo and Moscow.

He was known for flaunting his wealth, being surrounded by women and driving sports cars, and having popular appeal among Palestinian young men; his nickname underlined his popularity—the "Red Prince" ({{Langx|ar|الأمير الاحمر}}). He served as the security chief of Fatah.{{cite news|title=Other Voices: Time for Arafat to retire|url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-478849311.html|access-date=3 October 2013|newspaper=Arab American News|date=27 March 1998|first=Ali |last=Baghdadi|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131011162738/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-478849311.html|archive-date=11 October 2013|url-status=dead|via=Highbeam}} After the Munich massacre during the 1972 Olympic Games, he was hunted by the Israeli Mossad during its assassination campaign. In 1973, Mossad agents killed an innocent Moroccan waiter, Ahmed Bouchiki, in what became known as the Lillehammer affair in Norway, mistaking Bouchiki for Salameh, and resulting in the arrest of some of the Israeli agents.{{cite news |date=2013-07-22 |title=Witness History: The Lillehammer Hit |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01c4qfs |newspaper=BBC World Service |access-date=20 June 2024}}

As a result of the failure in Lillehammer and his alleged CIA protection, Salameh felt relatively safe. Having lived under cover in various parts of the Middle East and Europe, in 1978, he married Georgina Rizk, a Lebanese celebrity who had been Miss Universe seven years earlier. The couple spent their honeymoon in Hawaii and then stayed at Disneyland in California. When Rizk became pregnant, she returned to her flat in Beirut where Salameh also rented a separate apartment. Rizk was six months pregnant at the time of his death.{{cite news|title=How Mossad got the Red Prince|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1946&dat=19790201&id=3pQuAAAAIBAJ&pg=7100,5559702|access-date=20 June 2024|newspaper=The Montreal Gazette |date=1 February 1979}} Their son Ali Salameh is a political science graduate who studied in Canada.{{Cite web |url=http://www.voy.com/29828/1589.html |title=Ali Salamah, Georgina Rizk's son got married in Cairo, Egypt |access-date=4 December 2016 |archive-date=4 December 2016 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20161204193849/http://www.voy.com/29828/1589.html |url-status=live }} By a prior marriage he was a grandson-in-law of Mohammad Amin al-Husayni. He had two sons from his first marriage to Um Hassan.{{cite book|first=Simon |last=Reeve|title=One Day in September: The Full Story of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and the Israeli Revenge Operation "Wrath of God"|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BcAsBHZ4DLwC&pg=PA189|year=2000|publisher=Arcade Publishing|isbn=978-1-55970-547-9|page=189}}

Salameh served as the key bridge between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1970 until his death after being recruited as a CIA asset by Robert Ames. The PLO, at the request of the US, had undertaken steps to help ensure the security of both the US Embassy—Salameh responded by posting a PLO guard unit there{{cite book |author-link=Ronen Bergman |first=Ronen |last=Bergman |title=Rise and Kill First |publisher=Random House |date=2018 |pages=215–224}}—and, more generally, American citizens resident in Lebanon. The contacts later developed more extensively as the PLO offered its intelligence assistance in regard to larger regional issues.{{cite book |author-link=Rashid Khalidi |first=Rashid |last=Khalidi |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xXlwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT88 |title=The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 |publisher=Metropolitan Books |date=2020 |isbn=978-1-627-79854-9 |page=88}}{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34478-2001Sep14?language=printer|title=Penetrating Terrorist Networks|first=David |last=Ignatius|date=16 September 2001|newspaper=The Washington Post|page=B07|access-date=24 August 2017|archive-date=4 June 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604225635/http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34478-2001Sep14?language=printer|url-status=dead}} The US had undertaken with Israel to avoid contacts with the PLO, but US security interests under Gerald Ford, on the advice of Henry Kissinger, enabled an unofficial relationship which, when discovered by Israel, deeply disturbed Israeli officials. When asked by the Israelis, US officials denied the relationship.{{cite web|url=http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041112/news_lz1e12ignatiu.html|title=In the end, CIA-PLO links weren't helpful|first=David |last=Ignatius|date=12 November 2004|work=U-T San Diego |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20121015131618/http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041112/news_lz1e12ignatiu.html |archive-date=15 October 2012}} The desire to disrupt the channels between the US and the PLO was one of the motivations behind his assassination.

Salameh received dozens of CIA alerts of the Mossad's intention to assassinate him. The CIA also provided him with encrypted communications equipment and considered sending him an armored car. He was also warned by the CIA that his practice of driving around Beirut in convoys of vehicles carrying bodyguards left him vulnerable to an Israeli assassination.

In June 1978, the Mossad intensified its efforts to assassinate Salameh, codenamed Operation Maveer (Burner). Michael Harari was in charge of the operation. A Lebanese agent working for Israeli military intelligence supplied key details on Salameh's routine. Mossad operatives were subsequently deployed to Beirut to monitor Salameh, one of whom enrolled at the gym where he regularly exercised and befriended him.{{Cite web|url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-top-mossad-spy-who-befriended-his-terrorist-target-then-had-him-killed/|title=The top Mossad spy who befriended his terrorist target - then had him killed|first=Itamar|last=Sharon|date=24 December 2019|website=The Times of Israel |access-date=20 June 2024}} As many as fourteen Mossad agents were involved in the operation.{{Cite magazine|url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,946209-2,00.html|title=MIDDLE EAST: Death of a Terrorist|magazine=Time |date=5 February 1979|via=content.time.com|access-date=20 June 2024}} One of the agents believed to be involved was Erika Chambers, who arrived in Beirut in October 1978 posing as an NGO staffer wishing to assist Palestinian orphans. She rented a flat overlooking Salameh's apartment. Two other agents involved in the operation using the aliases Peter Scriver and Roland Kolberg entered Lebanon on British and Canadian passports respectively.{{cite web|url=http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000634.html|title=Munich (3): BBC set to name woman agent who killed Olympics massacre mastermind|date=24 January 2006 |first=Tom |last=Gross |access-date=20 June 2024}}

From October 1978, over a period of six weeks, Mossad agents observed Salameh, noting that he spent most afternoons with Rizk at her apartment in Snoubra, West Beirut, and when not in meetings spent time at the gym and at a sauna. An initial plan to kill him with a bomb attack at the sauna was vetoed for fear of excessive civilian casualties. The Mossad decided to kill him with a car bomb. Explosives were placed in the trunk of a Volkswagen which was then parked close to Salameh's apartment block.

On 22 January 1979, Salameh was in a convoy of two Chevrolet station wagons headed from Rizk's flat to his mother's for a birthday party.{{cite web|url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/an-eye-for-an-eye-20-11-2001/|title=An Eye for an Eye|work=CBS News|date=21 November 2001|access-date=17 August 2012 |url-status=live|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20020415090611/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/11/20/60II/main318655.shtml |archive-date=15 April 2002}}{{cite journal|title=none|journal=University of Southampton New Reporter|date=8 March 1992|volume=9|issue=17|series=People }} Chambers was on her balcony painting, with the Volkswagen parked below on Rue Verdun (an upscale commercial and residential street in Beirut). As Salameh's convoy passed the Volkswagen at 3:35 pm and turned onto Rue Madame Curie,{{cite web|url=http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,105948,00.html|title=Conspiracy Theory|first=John |last=Weisman|date=18 July 2006|access-date=18 July 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121001153307/http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,105948,00.html|archive-date=1 October 2012|website=military.com}} 100 kg of explosive attached to the car by a fellow Mossad agent was remotely exploded, either by Chambers or on her signal to another Mossad agent. Harari watched the explosion through a telescope from an Israeli Navy missile boat off the coast of Beirut.

The detonation left Salameh conscious, but severely wounded and in great pain, having pieces of steel shrapnel embedded in his head and throughout his body. He was rushed to the American University of Beirut, where he died on the operating table at 4:03 p.m.{{cite book|title=One day in September|first=Simon |last=Reeve|date=1 September 2000|publisher=Arcade Publishing|isbn=978-1559705479|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781559706032}} Salameh's four bodyguards were also killed in the explosion.{{cite news|title=Munich massacre leader killed in Beirut explosion|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=wQ5eAAAAIBAJ&pg=1417,3042234&dq=ali+hassan+salameh&hl=en|access-date=20 June 2024|newspaper=Observer Reporter|date=23 January 1979|agency=AP|location=Beirut}} Four bystanders were also killed. In addition, at least 16 people were injured in the blast. Immediately following the operation, the Mossad agents involved in the operation left the country. Chambers and two other agents were picked up by boat on the Beirut shore and taken to an Israeli missile boat.

Salameh was buried in Beirut after a public funeral ceremony attended by Yasser Arafat and about 20,000 Palestinians on 24 January 1979.{{cite news|title=Funeral held for Salameh|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=8X5VAAAAIBAJ&pg=1086,2890497&dq=ali+hassan+salameh&hl=en|access-date=20 June 2024|newspaper=The Leader Post|date=25 January 1979|location=Beirut}}Middle East International No 92, 2 February 1979; Helena Cobban pp.3-4 puts the number attending the funeral as 50,000

• Ali Hassan Salameh was featured in the plot of the Steven Spielberg film Munich as one of the assassination targets. He is seen twice portrayed by Mehdi Nebbou, but was not assassinated until after the events of the film.
• He appears as the character named Jamal Ramlawi in the spy novel Agents of Innocence by David Ignatius, a thinly disguised account of his recruitment by the CIA.{{cite book|title=Agents of Innocence|pages=205–230|first=David |last=Ignatius|date=17 September 1997|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|isbn=978-0393317381}}
• He is briefly mentioned in the Robert Ludlum novel The Janson Directive, where his alleged links to the CIA are cited as an example of shady deals the United States makes.{{cite book|title=The Janson Directive|first=Robert |last=Ludlum|date=1 July 2008|page=[https://archive.org/details/jansondirectivelud00ludl/page/581 581]|publisher=St. Martin's Paperbacks|isbn=978-0312945152|title-link=The Janson Directive|author-link=Robert Ludlum}}
• Daniel Silva borrowed from the exploits of Ali Hassan Salameh and his relatives to create the background for his fictional spy novel Prince of Fire, 2005.{{citation needed|date=January 2018}}
• Ali Hassan Salameh is repeatedly referenced in the book By Way of Deception by Victor Ostrovsky in his account of his own recruitment and training to become an officer in Mossad.{{cite book |title=By Way of Deception |pages=179, 181, 185–86, 191, 197, 201–2, 205–6 |author-link=Victor Ostrovsky |first=Victor |last=Ostrovsky |date=1990 |publisher= Stoddart Publishing}}

• {{cite book|last=Bar-Zohar|first=Michael|author-link=Michael Bar-Zohar|author2=Eitan Haber

|title=The Quest for The Red Prince: The Israeli Hunt for Ali Hassen Salameh the PLO leader who masterminded the Olympic Games Massacre|publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson|year=1983|isbn=978-0-297-78063-2}} which includes black-and-white photographic plates and which also include Yasser Arafat, together with an index.

• {{cite book|title=Massacre in Munich: The Manhunt for the Killers Behind the 1972 Olympics Massacre|author=Michael Bar Bar-Zohar and Eitan Haber|date=1 December 2005|publisher=The Lyons Press|isbn=978-1592289455}}

• Yuval Aviv

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Category:1941 births

Category:1979 deaths

Category:Assassinated Palestinian people

Category:Deaths by car bomb in Lebanon

Category:People killed in Mossad operations

Category:Members of the Black September Organization

Category:Palestinian mass murderers

Category:Palestinian nationalists

Category:Mossad assassinations following the Munich massacre

Category:Palestine Liberation Organization members