Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Daily Star staff

The son of Ahmed Jibril, secretary-general of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine ­ General Command (PFLP-GC), was killed in Beirut on Monday when a bomb planted in his car exploded.
Mohammed Jihad Ahmed Jibril, 38, was driving alone in his Peugeot 505 at 11.45am down Mama Street leading to Corniche al-Mazraa in the Tallet al-Khayyat area when an estimated 2-kilogram bomb planted under his seat detonated.
Jibril’s father claimed it was the fifth attempt on his son’s life by Israel’s Mossad.
“Mossad managed … to assassinate my son after trying in vain four times to do it,” he said as he received condolences at his Damascus headquarters. “He is now a martyr, like the Palestinians who offer their lives everyday in Palestine.”
However, speaking to Al-Jazeera television in the evening, Jibril hinted that Jordanian intelligence might be involved, accusing it of recently monitoring the group’s military presence in Lebanon.
Yarden Vatikay, an aide to Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, denied any Israel’s role, saying: “As usual, they blame Israel.”
Later in the afternoon, Al-Jazeera reported that a senior PFLP-GC commander had been arrested in Beirut on suspicion of being involved in the killing. Security sources said three unidentified people were detained and being questioned.
While investigations are ongoing to determine if the bomb was detonated by remote control, security sources said the device was the same type used to assassinate Prime Minister Rashid Karami in 1987 ­ an attack carried out by the Lebanese Forces militia.
A previously unknown group, the Movement of Lebanese Nationalists, claimed responsibility for the assassination.
“One of our units has liquidated Jihad Jibril by detonating his car as he was going out of his secret hideout,” the group said in a statement faxed to Agence France Press in Cyprus. “We will not rest until we force all foreign hands, which are playing with Lebanon’s fate and future and forcing it into a new war, to leave  … without returning.
“Jihad Jibril, under Syria’s orders, has transformed the land of Lebanon in general, and the region of Tallet al-Khayyat in which he planted his secret barracks, into a den for planning and implementing operations against Lebanese interests,” the group said.
“Syria, its symbols and its tools … have been receiving one strike after another to force (Syria) to lift its grip on Lebanon and withdraw its soldiers and intelligence agents,” it added, promising more such operations.
The statement carried an emblem bearing the cedar tree, widely used by Christian forces during Lebanon’s civil war.
The explosion, which occurred less than four months after the assassination of former warlord Elie Hobeika, tore Jibril to pieces and scattered his body around the vehicle, twisting the frame and dousing it with blood. A nearby parked Honda was destroyed and the windows of buildings were shattered by the blast.
As ambulances rushed to the scene, security personnel investigating the incident soon found the vehicle’s registration papers, which listed the name of Hassan Mohammed Abdel-Latif. According to the papers, the car had been sold to Khalil Ibrahim Habki.
Officers first assumed the driver was Habki himself before Jibril’s Syrian ID card was found amid the rubble. Security sources also said that Jibril, who does not usually disclose his whereabouts, was leaving one of his residences in the area at the time the bomb went off.
An hour after the explosion, PFLP-GC spokesperson Abu Rushdi rushed to the site to confirm Jibril’s identity. Abu Rushdi met with security officials at the nearby Al-Helou police headquarters before telling reporters that the body was that of Jihad Jibril.
Jibril is to be buried in Damascus on Tuesday. The PFLP-GC received condolences Monday at its Bourj al-Barajneh headquarters. in Beirut as well as
in Damascus.
Chief Military Prosecutor Asaad Jadoun was among those at the scene listening to reports from security personnel, but declined to comment.
Born in 1964, Jihad Jibril was a resident of Beirut and served as the head of military operations for the PFLP-GC, which was founded by his father in 1968.
Security sources said the victim, who was a law student at the Beirut Arab University, had received several previous death threats and that other attempts on the lives of PFLP-GC officials had occurred in recent weeks.
According to the PFLP-GC, Jihad Jibril held the rank of major in the organization after attending the Libyan military academy from 1981-1983 and receiving parachute training.
In 1997 he was badly wounded in an explosion during an exercise in the Bekaa, and in 2000 he escaped an assassination attempt when his car came under fire near a PFLP-GC base south of Beirut.
The PFLP-GC, which has not been a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization since 1984, is based in Damascus.
In 1967, when Palestinian President Yasser Arafat refused to give him the command of his Fatah faction’s military wing, Jibril abandoned plans to merge his group with Fatah and joined George Habash in founding the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He then broke away from that organization in 1968 to establish the PFLP-GC.
The PFLP-GC also opposed the 1993 Oslo Accords and threatened to assassinate Arafat, saying he had “betrayed the Palestinian cause.”
Lebanese and Palestinian groups voiced their dismay at the assassination.
“Zionist fingerprints are obvious behind this assassination, which creates a critical political and security development,” said a Hizbullah statement. “This highlights the Zionist attempts to shake the country’s security after it has been defeated in Lebanon and withdraw in humiliation.” ­ With agencies

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