52 Friday, March 7, 1986
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Kaddafi:
PAYMASTER
OF TERROR
No newcomer to the economics of terror, he
paid $10 million to the PLO's Black
September movement for the Olympic
Village hit in 1972.
BY HELEN DAVIS
Special to The Jewish News
Terrorism pays. Anyone in Lebanon will
tell you that.
For attacks against Israeli targets, there
is a fixed scale of fees; 10,000 Lebanese
pounds for setting an explosive charge;
20,000 Lebanese pounds for throwing a
hand grenade; 30,000 Lebanese pounds for
firing a weapon; and 300,000. Lebanese
pounds, around $25,000, for a suicide mis-
sion. Payable, in cash, to the family of the
deceased.
These are rich pickings in a country
where kids with Kalachnikovs are trained
to kill from the onset of puberty. But,
then, no one has ever accused Colonel
Muammar Kaddafi, Libya's erratic leader,
of doing things on the cheap.
As the Middle East's chief terror
broker — in a region where terror is big
business — he is renowned for paying well
above market rates. This year alone,
despite plummeting oil revenues, the Lib-
yan leader has earmarked $100 million for •
the upkeep of a diverse range of terrorist
organizations. In addition, he maintains a
substantial fund in petty cash to finance
freelance activities in Lebanon• or any-
where else he sees traitors, enemies and
rivals.
Colonel Kaddafi is not new to the world
of terror politics. In 1972, he paid a cool
U.S. $10 million to the Palestine Libera-
tion Organization's Black September
movement when it pulled off a sensational
attack on the Munich Olympic Village in
1972, killing 11 Israeli athletes.
The Olympic spectacular, carried live
into the homes of millions of viewers
around the world, was a made-for-tele-
vision drama, a brilliant media coup. It
was also a hard act to follow: a mere U.S.
$5,000 was all that Colonel Kaddafi was
prepared to pay for an attack on an Israeli
airliner which killed four and injured 22. at
Istanbul airport four years later.
But Abu Nidal — the dissident Pales-
tinian who is to terror what Boy George
is to rock — has sent the price soaring
once again. Last year, according to British
military sources, the Libyan leader re-
tained his services for a fee of no less than
$12 million per year.
Nor is Colonel Kaddafi's aid to terrorists
to be counted only in cold, hard cash. Lib-
yan diplomatic pouches provide the
pipeline that carries the weaponry to the
terror targets, while Libyan embassies, or
"people's bureaux," serve as arms depots
and distribution points.
Since coming to power in the coup which
overthrew Libya's King Idris II in 1969, "
Colonel Kaddafi has resolutely pursued a
line which combines equal measures of ,
atheistic Marxism and Islamic fundamen-
talism. This somewhat eccentric amalgam
of revolution and religion was given
elegant expression*a statement put out
by the official Libyan News Agency
following the twin attacks on the Rome