It is relatively rare for terrorist groups to be named after individuals.
FRANKFURT AM MAIN, GERMANY — If you have ever flown from North America to Europe (or through Europe to destinations further abroad) you will most likely have flown through Frankfurt Airport (FRA for those among you who collect airport codes). Often, it is after a long overnight flight in which you have probably slept fitfully, if at all. Unless you paid for business (or got an upgrade) where they have those cool ‘lie-flat’ seats.
It is a sprawling facility, one I have had to navigate stumbling on many, many occasions. You try to answer even the simplest questions at passport control when you have had 30 minutes of shut eye! Not a pleasant experience!
As a major transportation hub FRA is also a lucrative terrorist target, for all the reasons we have discussed before: large, lots of people, nowhere to run, easy access, instant notoriety, etc. And indeed it has been hit by attacks in the past (I think the most recent one was in 2011).
1985 Frankfurt airport bombing
On 19 June 1985, a bombing at the airport killed three and wounded 74 people. A second bomb was also found and defused not far from the first explosion. Two of those killed were Australian children, a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old siblings, while the third a Portuguese man.
Some 30 groups claimed responsibility for the attack but in 1988 West German investigators concluded that the Palestinian Abu Nidal Organisation (ANO) had perpetrated it. There was also speculation that former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi played a role (the Libyans used to do that in those days).
ANO was named, not surprisingly, for Abu Nidal, the common name for a Palestinian splinter terrorist group known more formally as the Fatah Revolutionary Council. It was responsible for dozens of attacks in 20 nations, killing more than 1,500 people. Still, it has been a while since we have heard of their exploits.
On this day in 1985, the Abu Nidal Organisation was believed to have been behind the bombing at Frankfurt Airport in which 3 people, including 2 children, were killed.
It is rare for a terrorist organisation to carry the name of its founder. Abu Nidal (the name is a kunya, an Arabic practice of naming one’s parent after the eldest child – for instance I would be Abu Erin – and is often used metaphorically: Abu Nidal means ‘the father of struggle) was a Palestinian who broke with the Palestine Liberation Organisation way back in 1974 and was active until his death in an apartment in Baghdad at the hands of a shooter.
So do arrogant, boastful terrorists leave their mark on their organisations, or is that the work of the press? Inquiring minds want to know!
