In another case of gross disregard for due process, a senior leader of
Hezbollah was blown apart on a Damascus street last week without even a
by-your-leave, let alone being read his Miranda rights.
Imad Mughniyeh's dossier may have been extensive, but he never got his day
in court. Indeed, he seems to have done everything he could to avoid it.
It's said he was unrecognizable even before last week's blast, having
undergone plastic surgery more than once in order to avoid the kind of
unpleasantness that finally did him in.
The notorious Mr. Mughniyeh met his end in K'far Soussa, a fashionable
Damascus neighborhood, where he was said to have been visiting Iranian
friends. (Syria is notably hospitable to foreigners, at least if they're
supporting terrorists.)
From a humble peasant background, Imad Mughniyeh had risen to the top
echelon of Hezbollah by dint of devoted service. His resume, aka rap sheet,
goes back at least to 1983 and the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut,
which killed more than 300. He's also been credited with the murder of 63
the same year in an attack on the American embassy there.
Imad Mughniyeh is said - mere hearsay again! - to have been behind the
hijacking of a TWA jetliner that went on for 17 days and included the
beating, torture and eventual murder of Petty Officer Robert Dean Stethem,
U.S.N., who was singled out for special treatment. (At the time, Americans
swore we would never forget him, but of course we pretty much did. Just as
the memory of September 11, 2001, grows dim in the American memory, and
those who recall it in this election year are dismissed as, yes,
fearmongers.)
Space, and the shadowy nature of a career in terrorism, a crowded field
these days, does not permit a comprehensive review of the exploits
attributed to the sanguinary Mr. Mughniyeh, or a full account of the blood
debt he ran up. Suffice it to say that more than one intelligence agency had
a powerful incentive to collect it.
As head of Islamic Jihad in Lebanon during the chaotic 1980s, the tireless
Mr. Mughniyeh supervised the kidnapping of dozens of Americans and other
Westerners for ransom. But a man's got to make a living, doesn't he?