Hezbollah

by Levitt, Matthew

  Over time, Hezbollah’s support networks in western and central Africa grew substantially. Africa analysts reported that Hezbollah, with the help of its networks in East Africa, operated in Sudan, Uganda, and Somalia, holding the most extensive presence of all terrorist groups active in the area.28 This expanded presence was the result of a concerted effort reportedly spearheaded by Imad Mughniyeh to build support networks within Lebanese Shi’a diaspora communities. By one account Mughniyeh was “the architect who instituted the establishment of support cells” in Lebanese Shi’a communities outside Lebanon.29

  By 1988, support for Hezbollah had already become so entrenched within the Lebanese immigrant community in Africa that the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence wrote an eighteen-page analytical report on the economic and political roles of Lebanese communities in sub-Saharan Africa. The report made clear that the US intelligence community was concerned not only about Hezbollah’s fundraising activities in the region but about the prospects for Hezbollah terrorist operations in Africa as well. One issue the paper sought to address was “the radical, pro-Iranian Hizballah movement” and “the potential for terrorism against pro-Western governments and U.S. facilities and citizens in the region.” Portions of the declassified report that remain redacted include “Coping with a Terrorist Threat” and “Hizballah’s Links to Tehran and Tripoli.”30

  Hezbollah Operations in Africa: The Hijacking of Air Afrique Flight 56

  On January 13, 1987, German authorities arrested Hezbollah operative Muhammad Hammadi at Frankfurt Airport as he attempted to smuggle liquid explosives into the country. Around the same time, another Hezbollah operative was arrested in Italy, but it was the arrest of Hammadi in particular that led to a series of Hezbollah terrorist operations aimed, at least in part, at securing his release. Hezbollah could tolerate the arrest of an average operative, but not the arrest of a member of the IJO’s inner circle. Such was the case with Imad Mughniyeh’s fixation on securing the release of his brother-in-law, Mustapha Badredinne, and the rest of the Kuwait 17, and such was the case now with the Hammadi clan.

  Hezbollah quickly carried out several operations aimed at securing Hammadi’s release, including the kidnapping of two German nationals in Beirut.31 The kidnapping of the German businessmen in Beirut was allegedly carried out by Muhammad Hammadi’s brother, Abbas Ali Hammadi. When that operation failed to secure his brother’s release, Abbas traveled to Germany himself, presumably as part of some more serious plot to free his brother. But on January 26, 1987, just thirteen days after his brother’s arrest, Abbas was also arrested at Frankfurt Airport as he landed.32 That appears to be when Hezbollah called upon Hussein Ali Mohammed Hariri to hijack Air Afrique flight 56—a civilian airliner traveling from Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, to a final destination of Paris, France—in an attempt to secure the release of both Hammadi brothers, as well as other detained Hezbollah operatives.

  Hezbollah’s clear commitment to seek Hammadi’s release indicated how important a player he was within Hezbollah’s IJO. A member of a clan closely tied to Hezbollah, Muhammad Hammadi already had an impressive terrorist resume. Most notably, in June 1985, he and Imad Mughniyeh, together with several other Hezbollah operatives, hijacked TWA flight 847 after it took off from Athens and redirected the plane to Beirut.

  Air Afrique flight 56, a DC-10 jumbo jet, originated in Brazzaville on the evening of July 24, 1987. Its flight plan called for stops in Bangui in the Central African Republic and then Rome before arriving in Paris. While officials first assumed Hariri had boarded the flight in Brazzaville, they later learned his embarkation point was Bangui, where he brought on board an Italian 7.65-millimeter pistol and explosives.33 Amazingly, he smuggled these possessions onto three different flights without incident or challenge. At Beirut International Airport, Hariri hid his weapons in a box supposed to have contained pastries. From there he flew to Lagos, Nigeria, where he transferred the weapons into a sports bag that was carried on board by an airport employee. (It remains unclear if the employee was a knowing accomplice or simply assisting a passenger.) From Lagos, Hariri flew to Bangui, where a small, token bribe greased the palms of a local customs official to allow Hariri to bypass security.34 He may have had more organized help, though. According to the CIA, “Hariri almost certainly received some support in the Central African Republic (CAR) before he boarded the flight in Bangui.”35

  One can imagine Hariri, now seated on the flight, his weapons on board, sighing in relief at having gotten this far unimpeded. For the next several legs of the trip, he bided his time, perhaps steeling himself for the moment of truth when he would strap on his explosives and hijack the aircraft. That moment came shortly after the plane took off from Rome for Paris. As the flight flew over Milan, Hariri brandished his handgun, exposed the explosives now wrapped around his waist, and commandeered the aircraft. Threatening to shoot passengers or blow up the plane, he demanded the flight veer off course and land in Geneva, Switzerland, for refueling so that he could direct the plane to Beirut. It appears Hariri intended to replicate Hammadi and Mughniyeh’s TWA hijacking from just two years earlier.36

  The flight landed at Geneva’s Cointrin International Airport with 164 people on board. Aside from fifteen crew members, the great majority of the passengers, sixty-four, were French, but Americans, Britons, a Canadian, and citizens of several African and Latin American countries were also represented. After conferring with French and Ivorian officials (because the airline was headquartered in the Ivory Coast and was due to land in France), Swiss authorities decided the plane would not be allowed to leave Geneva. Meanwhile, Hariri issued demands for the release not only of the Hammadi brothers but of other jailed Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorists as well. As Swiss security forces considered how to charge the plane, airport personnel began refueling it as slowly as possible to buy time.37

  Apparently keen to the refueling ruse, Hariri became nervous or angry (or both) over the delay and shot a French businessman, Zavier Beaulieu, through the mouth. Passengers in the back of the plane did not hear the shot but grew nervous when Hariri sent crew members to collect passengers’ passports. At the time, France and Iran were engaged in a heated diplomatic spat over France’s effort to arrest an Iranian diplomat. US intelligence would assess that “Hizballah’s desire to take revenge on France—which has a number of pro-Iranian terrorists under arrest—helps to explain why Hariri singled out French passengers first.”38

  The turning point came when passengers overheard Hariri saying, “It is in Beirut that my problem will be solved.” Then, when an announcement over the intercom indicated that the hijacker planned to reroute the flight to Beirut, several passengers scrambled for the doors to try to escape. “Beginning then,” one passenger recalled, “we felt really threatened.” Luckily, a Congolese crew member was able to overwhelm Hariri, and passengers flung a side door open and slid down emergency chutes to the tarmac. The brave crew member was shot in the stomach and seriously wounded, but he survived. As the passengers escaped and more crew members wrestled the hijacker to the ground, Swiss security forces stormed and secured the plane.39

  Hariri, it turns out, not only went through Hezbollah military training but had been detained for ten months by Israeli authorities in the early 1980s on suspicions of terrorism. Saying he was prepared to die for his religion, Hariri would tell the court that sentenced him to life in prison, “You say I am a fundamentalist. I accept.”40 Hariri admitted carrying out the hijacking on Hezbollah’s orders, saying it was an honor to be a “fighter for Allah.”41 Seventeen years later, Swiss authorities released Hariri from jail and deported him to Lebanon, well short of his full life sentence. Even his seventeen-year sentence proved eventful, including two attempted jail-breaks, the first in 1992 and the second a decade later. Although his second escape was successful, after two months, authorities tracked him down in Morocco. In August 2003, after nine months of legal machinations, Hariri was extradited back to Switzerland. His release and dep
ortation to Lebanon occurred after he became eligible for parole fourteen months later.42 In line with the CIA’s initial suspicion, however, Swiss authorities continued to investigate someone they believed may have helped Hariri during his escape. It was not clear if that someone was believed to be connected to Hezbollah or not.43

  Expanded Operations in “Nontraditional” Venues like Africa

  An October 1987 intelligence report noted that “the Air Afrique hijacking dovetails with information that suggests Hizballah has increased planning for operations outside the Middle East.” One reason Hezbollah was looking abroad was that Western targets were growing scarce in Lebanon following Hezbollah’s kidnapping campaign, and those few remaining targets had been significantly hardened against potential attackers. Meanwhile, improved security measures in Europe meant more restricted access to targets of interest there.44

  Considering Hezbollah’s commitment to terrorism and the permissive operating environment that pervades the African continent, US intelligence warned, “We believe that Hizballah will turn increasingly to Africa as a site for terrorist operations.” One reason for this concern was the level of support Hezbollah enjoyed in Africa. “Hizballah already has political supporters in place in several West African countries, some of whom presumably could recruit terrorist operatives from local Lebanese communities.” The CIA warning continued, “Local Hizballah supporters—or, as in Hariri’s case, relatives of Hizballah members—could provide logistic support to operatives sent from Lebanon for specific operations.”45

  In a late July 1988 piece weighing the likelihood of an Iranian-sponsored attack in retaliation for the accidental US Navy downing earlier that month of Iran Air flight 655, the CIA speculated that Hezbollah terrorists could hijack or bomb a US airliner. “They would probably try to mount this kind of operation from an Asian or African airport where security is lax, American targets are more accessible, and local support networks are in place,” the CIA assessed.46 Later reports confirmed such suspicions were on the mark. In December 1989, CIA analysts wrote that following the Hezbollah hijacking of a Kuwaiti airliner out of Bangkok in April 1988, “the group was linked to operational activity in Ivory Coast and elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa” in 1988 and 1989.47

  Investigations into Hezbollah’s activities in Europe and Africa in 1989 led to further revelations about Hezbollah’s logistical support network in Africa. An investigation initiated that August led to the arrest of a former French vice consul to Conakry, Guinea, for selling fifty blank French passports to Shi’a extremists. According to a US intelligence report, the investigation began when British authorities found “an authentic, French passport, issued in Conakry, among the belongings of a Hizballah operative who was killed when the bomb he was assembling in his London hotel room exploded.” In the ensuing investigation, British authorities determined that the consular officer sold the authentic but blank passports to extremists with ties to Hezbollah. “The incident,” the report concluded, “is another sign that Hizballah has an infrastructure in Africa that can be tapped to support terrorist operations elsewhere in the world.”48

  US intelligence remained concerned about Hezbollah’s growing international support structure and operational capabilities in places like Africa. Writing in July 1992, the CIA assessed that Hezbollah’s expanded international support network improved its ability to carry out attacks in unlikely places: “Hezbollah’s efforts to expand its international support infrastructure have enhanced the group’s ability to target U.S. and Israeli interests, particularly in non-traditional venues such as Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa.”49 Nearly two decades later, this assessment would still ring true. On August 5, 2008, a Nigerian official learned from Moshe Ram, Israeli ambassador to Nigeria, that Hezbollah was planning an attack against Israeli targets in West Africa. This was no empty threat. According to Ram, “[we] got a security threat yesterday from Hezbollah that our embassies in West Africa will be attacked.”50

  Expatriate Remittances: The Revealing Case of UTA Flight 141

  Hezbollah’s institutionalized presence in Africa, a benefit of operating within large, long-standing Shi’a communities, presents the group with especially lucrative fund-raising opportunities. “Hezbollah uses the region extensively to raise funds, recruit new members and launder money,” Former Washington Post West Africa bureau chief, Doug Farah, noted. “Because it is part of a large community, its presence there is much greater than that of al Qaeda, and more institutional. Because of that, it is both easier to identify and more difficult to uproot.”51 To be sure, not all Shi’a and certainly not all Lebanese living in Africa support Hezbollah. “It is important to note,” a 2011 Congressional Research Service report stressed, “that the Lebanese community in West Africa is not monolithically Muslim nor completely supportive of Hezbollah, but mirrors the same religious and political divisions present in Lebanon.” Yet according to the report, the Lebanese diaspora communities in West and central Africa continued to provide Hezbollah “a significant amount of financing.”52 The vast majority of these funds are raised through expatriate donations, Mafia-style shakedowns, front companies, and even blood diamonds and drugs.

  Hezbollah’s well-oiled campaign to solicit charitable donations from expatriate communities in Africa is perhaps best illustrated by the tragic crashing of a Union des Transport Africaines (UTA) charter flight in December 2003. Technical problems delayed the flight’s departure, which had originated in the Guinean capital Conakry, and stopped in Freetown, Sierra Leone, before making a stop in Cotonou, Benin, before the final leg to Beirut. That Christmas day, the Lebanese-owned UTA plane, flight 141, registered in Guinea, clipped a building just after takeoff at 2:55 PM. The plane then exploded and crashed into the shallow surf just off the Atlantic coast, killing 141 of the 161 passengers on board.53 Most of the casualties were Lebanese businessmen working in West African nations; fifteen were Bangladeshi peacekeepers returning to Lebanon from missions in Sierra Leone and Liberia.54 Ten of those killed came from Kharayeb, a small village in southern Lebanon. Among the village’s 5,000 residents, 300 had immigrated to Benin, “where they work, mainly in the car trade between Germany and Africa,” a village official explained. “Theirs was an economic success story. You can see the proof in the beautiful villas they had built here [in Kharayeb] on the flanks of the hillsides.”55

  One passenger stood out, however: Sheikh Ali Damush, described as a representative of Hezbollah.56 According to press reports, a “foreign relations official of the African branch of the Lebanese Hezbollah party and two of his aides” were among those killed. These press reports also claimed the Hezbollah officials were carrying $2 million in contributions, raised from wealthy Lebanese nationals living in Africa, to the organization’s headquarters in Beirut. Arab reports indicated further that the $2 million “represented the regular contributions the party receives from wealthy Lebanese nationals in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Benin, and other African states.”57

  The final report emerging from the French investigation into the crash revealed suspicious handling of the flight from the outset. Not only was there no overall flight manifest recording the boarding and loading of passengers and baggage, but seven different manifests were found, “all badly completed.” Moreover, the flight was weighed down with around three tons of unreported baggage. This extra weight, investigators concluded, had been the direct cause of the accident, as compounded by structural flaws and several other possible contributing factors. In the final analysis, the plane crashed because of “the difficulty that the flight crew encountered in performing the rotation with an overloaded airplane.”58 By some accounts, the unregistered weight may have included as much as $6 to $10 million in cash. In a veiled reference to Hezbollah, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt suggested a scandal lay behind the UTA service that could implicate “big names.”59

  The day after the crash, Lebanon’s foreign minister flew to Benin, together with a Lebanese diving team, to collect the Lebanese bodi
es and escort them, along with the few survivors, back to Lebanon. Also on the flight, Hezbollah indicated in a public statement, was a Hezbollah envoy. While Hezbollah quickly denied any ties to the crash, the group’s immediate dispatching of an envoy to Benin “to console the sons of the Lebanese community” indicated the value it placed on these expatriate communities.60

  The transfer of millions of dollars at a time via human courier is remarkable in its audacity, but not uncommon. In 1998, Lebanese expatriates in Senegal attempted to smuggle approximately $1.7 million to Lebanon.61 At the time, the Lebanese in Senegal claimed the smuggling operation was merely an attempt to evade Senegalese law, not to finance Hezbollah. Israeli sources, however, rank Senegal as the “secondary center for Hezbollah’s fundraising activity in Africa” after the Ivory Coast.62 In December 2010, three men were arrested when they landed at Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris. The individuals were attempting to fly from Benin to Beirut via Paris with $6.5 million and €48,500 in undeclared funds, and a business card for Ellissa Megastore, a car lot in Cotonou, Benin, was found on one of the men. Further, between 2007 and 2008, Ghanian customs officials reported that $1.2 billion in declared US currency had been imported across Ghana’s border with Togo, $845 million of which was declared by Lebanese nationals.63

  Whatever the precise numbers, which in any event surely fluctuate, one conclusion is clear: “Many in the Lebanese diaspora community in West Africa, numbering several hundred thousand, pay a portion of their earnings to support Hezbollah in Lebanon, with the knowledge and acquiescence of the host government.”64