Adnan Awad (born 1942 in Palestine) was a
captain
Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...
in the
Palestinian Liberation Army who joined the
15 May Organization
Founded in 1979, the 15 May Organization or Abu Ibrahim Faction was a minor breakout faction from Wadie Haddad's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations (PFLP-EO).Emerson, Steven A. & Cristina del Sesto. ''Terrorist: ...
and prepared to bomb the
Noga Hilton
The JW Marriott Cannes is a five star hotel on the Croisette in Cannes. It was built in 1992 as the Noga Hilton by hotel magnate Nessim Gaon, and was renamed the Palais Stéphanie in 2007 when it passed from Hilton to Accor. It was renamed again i ...
hotel in
Geneva, Switzerland on August 31, 1982, but instead fled the scene and later turned himself into the American embassy and claimed he wanted to renounce any
terrorist connections.
[Emerson, Steven A. & Cristina del Sesto. "Terrorist: The Inside Story of the Highest-Ranking Iraqi Terrorist Ever to Defect to the West", 1991]
Early life
Born to a shopkeeper and his wife Widad in
Ijzim
Ijzim ( ar, إجزم) was a village in the Haifa Subdistrict of British Mandate Palestine, 19.5 kilometers south of the city, that was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Many of its Palestinian inhabitants ended up as refugees in Je ...
, Adnan had an older sister. The family moved to
Kiswe, Syria and Awad attended ''Alliance High School'' in Damascus.
The August 1982 bombing attempt
On August 11, 1982,
Mohammed Rashid
Mohammed Bassim Ahmed Rashid ( ar, محمد باسم; born 3 July 1995) is a Palestinian professional footballer who plays as a defensive midfielder for Liga 1 club Bali United and the Palestine national team.
Club career Persib Bandung
On 17 ...
unsuccessfully tried to bomb
Pan Am Flight 830
Pan Am Flight 830 was a flight from New Tokyo International Airport (now known as Narita International Airport) in Tokyo, Japan, to Honolulu International Airport in Hawaii. On August 11, 1982, the Boeing 747-121 serving the flight, nicknamed ''Cl ...
en route to
Honolulu. Twenty days later, Awad turned himself over to the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia and claimed that he had been pressured into joining the group.
Aftermath
He was turned over to the Swiss, but later returned to the United States to help secure indictment against the 15 May leadership. With his aid, American intelligence agencies determined that it was the 15 May Organization that had constructed the bomb aboard
Pan Am Flight 830
Pan Am Flight 830 was a flight from New Tokyo International Airport (now known as Narita International Airport) in Tokyo, Japan, to Honolulu International Airport in Hawaii. On August 11, 1982, the Boeing 747-121 serving the flight, nicknamed ''Cl ...
.
[Michelle Visser, Sovereign Immunity and Informant Defectors: The United States' Refusal to Protect its Protectors, 58 Stan. L. Rev. 663 (2005)]
In 1991 he co-operated with author
Steven Emerson, who wrote about Awad's life in the book "''Terrorist''".
References
1942 births
Living people
Palestinian militants
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