Imad Mughniyeh

Imad Fayez Mughniyeh (Arabic: عماد فايز مغنية‎; 7 December 1962 – 12 February 2008), 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. He is believed to have been Hezbollah's chief of staff and overseer of its military, intelligence, and security apparatus. He has been described as a skilled military tactician and a highly elusive figure. He was often referred to as an ‘untraceable ghost’.

U.S. and Israeli officials say Mughniyeh was directly and personally involved in terrorist attacks and the mastermind of many suicide bombings, murders, kidnappings, and assassinations. Mughniyeh formed Unit 121 as Hezbollah's covert assassination squad and he was behind the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing and 1983 United States embassy bombing, in which over 350 people were killed, as well as the kidnapping of dozens of foreigners in Lebanon in the 1980s. He was indicted in Argentina for his role in the 1992 Israeli embassy attack in Buenos Aires. The highest-profile attacks he was involved in occurred in the early 1980s when Mughniyeh was in his early twenties. U.S. intelligence officials accused him of killing more United States citizens than any other man prior to the 11 September attacks.

Mughniyeh was known by his nom de guerre Al-Hajj Radwan. He was included in the European Union's list of wanted terrorists and had a US$5 million bounty on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list. To many in his home country, Lebanon and the Middle East, he is a national symbol and hero.

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