Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Lest we Forget

Lots of talk about Hezbollah these days and some mention of the lethal attacks they have made on Americans in the past:

• the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia
• the Marine barracks attack in Beirut back in 1983,
• the kidnappings and killings in Beirut of CIA station Chief Bill Buckley and US Marine Colonel Rich Higgins
• the murder of navy Diver Robbie Stethem when Hezbollah hijacked a TWA flight in 1985.

What seldom, if ever, gets mentioned though are some of the other atrocities against Americans committed by Hezbollah –all of which have gone unpunished. Let me refresh the record with mention of a few of them.

In the early to mid 80’s Hezbollah kidnapped and tortured a lot of Americans in Beirut beyond Bill Buckley, Rich Higgins and the journalist Terry Anderson.

David Dodge, for example, he was acting president of American University when he was kidnapped and held under heartless conditions for about a year. 

Malcolm Kerr, president of the same University when Hezbollah kidnapped and murdered him.

Jeremy Levin, the CNN bureau chief in Beirut.  He was kidnapped by Hezbollah and held for a long time before he actually escaped, though he got remarkably little media attention for it.

The Reverend Benjamin Weir, held for 16 months and released as a broken man.

And here’s one very seldom mentioned: 

In 1983 the US Embassy in Beirut was attacked by Hezbollah and 63 employees were killed, 120 were wounded. The CIA’s Mid East director was among the dead.

A year later, Hezbollah bombed a restaurant near a US Air Force base in Spain and 18 Americans were killed, 83 others wounded.

In September of 1984, Hezbollah struck the US embassy in East Beirut againkilling 23 employees and wounding 21 others.

Three months later, Hezbollah hijacked a Kuwait airliner.  They murdered the two Americans aboard: Charles Hegna and William Stanford, their names now lost to history. I’ll bet you have never even heard of them. Both were US government employees, auditors for the US Agency for International Development (AID).

Charles Hegna was 50 then, he would be 72 now.  He lived in Northern Virginia with his wife Edwena.  They had five children.

Charles Hegna had just done a financial audit in Yemen and was flying to Pakistan when four Hezbollah terrorists stormed the cockpit of his plane.  They shot an air marshall and forced the plane down in Tehran.

Charles Hegna and another AID auditor, William Stanford, were singled out and murdered. 

A third American with them was tortured but survived.

Hegna was beaten after he identified himself as an American.  They then shot him in the stomach, and still alive, they threw him on to the tarmac, breaking his legs. 

He was shot once more from above and for three hours he lay wounded, in agony in the sun, until an ambulance finally brought him to a an Iranian hospital where he died a few days later.

His wife Edwena, now in her 70’s, said a few years ago that the family had been destroyed by the murder. 

“Our lives were put into quicksand,” she said.

When the bodies of Charles Hegna and William Stanford came back to the US, the elder George Bush, then vice president, made this vow:

"We shall know their murderers, with the long memories of those who believe in patient but certain justice."

So that was 24 years ago and the US “knows” their murderers all right.  But we have done nothing about it –just like we have done almost nothing about all the other attacks by Hezbollah against Americans.

Comments

[Fonzie]

Hizbollah?

Your point of view does not at all match that of reporters from the 1980s.

Try Al-Dawa....

1) Large Turnout Reported For 1st Iraqi Vote Since '58 The Washington Post, June 21, 1980

In another development today, Al Dawa, a clandestine Iraqi fundamentalist Moslem organization, claimed responsibility for yesterday's grenade attack on the British Embassy here in which three gunmen reportedly were killed.

An Al Dawa spokesman told Agence France-Presse by phone that the attack was a "punitive operation against a center of British and American plotters."

2) Iraq Keeps a Tight Rein on Shiites While Bidding to Win Their Loyalty The Washington Post, November 30, 1982

Membership in Dawa, which means "the call," is punishable by execution. Dawa guerrillas were known for hurling grenades into crowds during religious ceremonies, and attacks claimed by the party were frequent until the middle of 1980.

3) U.S. HAS LIST OF BOMB SUSPECTS, LEBANESE SAYS Detroit Free Press, October 29, 1983

The source said the drivers of the two bomb-laden trucks were blessed before their mission by Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, leader of the Iranian-backed Dawa Party, a Lebanese Shiite Muslim splinter group.

4) SHULTZ SEES LINK BETWEEN BEIRUT, KUWAIT ATTACKS OFFICIALS IDENTIFY MAN WHO DROVE TRUCK BOMB, The Miami Herald, December 14, 1983

Secretary of State George Shultz said Tuesday that there "quite likely" was a link between the U.S. Embassy bombing in Kuwait and attacks on American facilities in Lebanon. He warned of possible retaliation.

(snip)

The sources said the investigators matched the prints on the fingers with those on file with Kuwaiti authorities and
tentatively identified the assailant as Raed Mukbil, an Iraqi automobile mechanic who lived in Kuwait and was a member of Hezb Al Dawa, a fundamentalist Iraqi Shiite Moslem group based in Iran.

5) KUWAIT NABS 10 SHIITES IN BOMBINGS 7 IRAQIS, 3 LEBANESE 'ADMIT' TERROR ATTACKS
The Miami Herald, December 19, 1983

Kuwait Sunday announced the arrests of 10 Shiite Moslems with ties to Iran in the terrorist bombings that killed four people and wounded 66 last week at the U.S. Embassy and other targets.

(snip)

Hussein said fingerprints from the driver who died in the blast at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait identified him as Raad Akeel al Badran, an Iraqi mechanic who lived in Kuwait and belonged to the Dawa party.

6) 10 Pro-Iranian Shiites Held in Kuwait Bombings, The Washington Post December 19, 1983

Kuwait announced yesterday the arrest of 10 Shiite Moslems with ties to Iran in terrorist bombings that killed four people and wounded 66 last Monday at the U.S. Embassy and other targets.

"All 10 have admitted involvement in the incidents as well as participating in planning the blasts," Abdul Aziz Hussein, minister of state for Cabinet affairs, told reporters after a Cabinet session, United Press International reported.

Hussein said the seven Iraqis and three Lebanese were members of the Al Dawa party, a radical Iraqi Shiite Moslem group with close ties to Iran.

7) Beirut Bombers Seen Front for Iranian-Supported Shiite Faction, The Washington Post, January 4, 1984

The terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the bombing of the U.S. Marine compound and the French military headquarters here may be a front for an exiled Iraqi Shiite opposition party based in Iran, in the view of a number of Arab and western diplomatic sources.

Authorities in Kuwait say their questioning of suspects in the recent bombing there of the U.S. and French embassies indicates a clear link between Islamic Jihad, a shadowy group that says it carried out the Beirut attacks, and Al Dawa Islamiyah, the main source of resistance to the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Al Dawa (The Call) has been outlawed in Iraq, where it wants to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state to replace the secular Baath Socialist government of Saddam Hussein, who is a Sunni Moslem.

It draws its strength from the large Shiite population in southern Iraq. Thousands of its most militant members were expelled to Iran in 1980 before the outbreak of the Iranian-Iraqi war and joined Al Dawa there. But it also has a large following in Lebanon among Iraqi exiles and sympathetic Lebanese Shiites.

While Al Dawa operates out of Tehran, it is not clear whether its activities abroad are under direct Iranian control or merely have Iran's tacit acceptance.

8)Baalbek Seen As Staging Area For Terrorism, The Washington Post, January 9, 1984

Al Dawa, according to Arab and western sources, is believed to have had a role in the Oct. 23 suicide bomb attacks on the U.S. Marine and French military compounds in Beirut.

Message From Iran Triggered Bombing Spree In Kuwait, The Washington Post, February 3, 1984

Al Dawa, for example, is no household name in the United States.

But it is a name important to this story.

It leads us back to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the ruling figure in Iran; to Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the militant Lebanese Shiite leader who has been implicated--despite his denials--in the Marine and French bombings in Beirut; to Hussein Musawi, Fadlallah's strong-arm lieutenant; to the Hakim brothers in Iran and their connections to the Middle East terrorism industry.

[Fonzie]

Hizbollah grew out of Al-Dawa.

Hizbollah?

Shall I go on???

U.S. News & World Report
December 26, 1983 / January 2, 1984
The New Face of Mideast Terrorism

A new brand of terrorism confronting the U.S. in the Mideast was demonstrated in the closing days of 1983 when a suicide bomber wrecked the American Embassy in Kuwait.

Actions that once were hallmarks of Mideast radicals -- takeovers of buildings, hijackings of airliners and seizing of hostages -- are waning. In their place: Terrorism sponsored by governments -- notably Iran and Syria -- and carried out by Moslem fanatics fired by hatred of the U.S. and a desire for martyrdom.

Prompted as much by current issues as by ideology, the new terrorism is more lethal, widespread and harder to contain than terrorism of the 1970s.

U.S. officials blamed the December 12 bombing of their embassy in Kuwait on ''Islamic fundamentalists'' of the Shiite sect, backed by Iran and Syria.

The Americans charged that the attack was ''clearly connected'' to three disastrous bombings in Beirut -- one in April that killed more than 60 people at the U.S. Embassy and two suicide attacks in October that killed more than 240 American servicemen at the Marine barracks and 58 soldiers at the French peacekeeping headquarters. Shiites also are blamed for a bomb that killed 61 persons at an Israeli command center in southern Lebanon in November.

Suspicion for the attacks in Lebanon centered on one group -- the Islamic Jihad [Holy War], a secretive Shiite unit based in Syrian-controlled eastern Lebanon. It is closely linked to the Iranian regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini, who calls the U.S. the ''great Satan.''

The terrorist who detonated the truckload of explosives at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait was identified as a 25-year-old Iraqi belonging to an outlawed Moslem unit, the Iranian Dawa Group.

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