Imad Fayez Mughniyeh (Arabic: عماد فايز مغنية‎; 7 December 1962 – 12 February 2008),[1] also known by his nom de guerre al-Hajj Radwan (الحاج رضوان), was a Lebanese militant leader who was the founding member of Lebanon's Islamic Jihad Organization and number two in Hezbollah's leadership.

[2] U.S. and Israeli officials have long accused Mughniyeh of being directly and personally involved in terrorist attacks which has resulted in many suicide bombings, murders, kidnappings, and assassinations.

[8] As part of a joint CIA–Mossad operation,[9][10] Mughniyeh was assassinated on the night of 12 February 2008 by a car bomb that was detonated as he passed by on foot,[11] in the Kafr Sousa neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria.

[12][13][14] Mughniyeh was born in the village of Tayr Dibba, near Tyre, on 7 December 1962 to a peasant family of Lebanon's southern Shi'a heartland.

[20] Mughniyeh was described a popular boy and a "natural entertainer" who cracked jokes at family weddings and "worked the crowd with a confidence unusual for a youth his age.

[21] Mughniyeh was discovered by fellow Lebanese Ali Abu Hassan Deeb (who would later become a Hezbollah leader) and quickly rose through the ranks of the movement.

[22] In the mid-1970s, Mugniyeh organized the "Student Brigade," a unit of 100 young men which became part of Yasser Arafat's elite Force 17.

After the withdrawal of PLO forces from Beirut in September 1982, Mughniyeh played a key role in resisting the Israeli occupation, revealing the location of Fatah arms caches.

He remained a Fatah member during this period but also worked the leftist Lebanese National Movement and Islamic resistance groups.

He remained committed to the Palestine cause throughout his life and founded Hezbollah's secret "Committee for Elimination of Israel" in 2000.

[24] In later years, and especially after the Oslo accords, Mughniyeh and Hezbollah sided with the more militant Palestinian factions such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

[22] Mughniyeh worked as the chief security for Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, a Shiia cleric and a spiritual mentor to many in Lebanon's Shi'a community, whose political consciousness was on the rise.

Fadlallah held no formal political role, "opposed violence and sectarian division, and defied growing Iranian influence in Lebanon[clarification needed]."

[30] According to former CIA agent Robert Baer, "Mughniyah is probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we’ve ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else.

The United States indicted Mughniyeh (and his collaborator, Hassan Izz al-Din) for the 14 June 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, in which he tortured and murdered the U.S. Navy Seabee diver Robert Stethem.

Some of these individuals were killed by Mughniyeh directly, such as Buckley, who was subjected to extreme psychological and medical torture under the supervision of the psychiatrist Aziz al-Abub.

The result of the kidnapping was Soviet pressure on Syria to stop its operations in Northern Lebanon in exchange for the release of the remaining three hostages.

[45] U.S. and Israeli officials have also alleged that Mugniyeh was the mastermind of the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, which killed 19 American air force personnel and a Saudi civilian.

They also accuse Mughniyeh of overseeing the 2006 cross border raid that killed eight soldiers and abducted two during Israel's 2006 incursion into Lebanon.

He was a member of Force 17, an armed branch of the Fatah movement charged with providing security for Yasser Arafat and other prominent PLO officials.

Mughniyeh also reportedly controlled Hezbollah's security apparatus, the Special Operations Command, which handles intelligence and conducts overseas terrorist acts.

[47] According to Jeffery Goldberg, writing in the New Yorker, "It is believed that Mugniyeh takes orders from the office of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, but that he reports to a man named Qasem Soleimani, the chief of a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps called Al Quds, or the Jerusalem Force—the arm of the Iranian government responsible for sponsoring terror attacks on Israeli targets.

[62] On 27 February 2008, The Jerusalem Post reported that Al-Quds Al-Arabi had written that anonymous "Syrian sources" had claimed that "several Arab nations conspired with Mossad" in the assassination of Mughniyeh.

[64] Ba'athist dissident and former Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam stated in 2008 that Syrian intelligence orchestrated the killing of Mughniyeh under orders from the Assad regime.

Lebanese politicians Walid Jumblatt and Saad Hariri as well as Mughniyeh's Iranian widow also accused Syrian officials.

[68] The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai reported that Hezbollah intelligence sources said they would retaliate for Mughniyeh's death by assassinating Israeli leaders.

[69] Newsweek reported that in 2007 Mossad's director general, Meir Dagan, tipped the CIA off about the location of Mughniyeh in Kafr Sousa, Damascus.

[70] The two Mossad agents had the roles of monitoring his movements and confirming Mughniyeh's identity using advanced facial recognition technology, while the CIA officer later detonated the bomb.

[73] At the funeral, Hassan Nasrallah appeared via video link and in the eulogy delivered for his fallen comrade, declared: "You crossed the borders.

"[81] After Mughniyeh's killing, Hezbollah's elite Intervention Unit was renamed the Redwan Force after his operational alias Hajj Radwan (الحاج رضوان) in April 2008.