The Red Prince the day Israel assassinated the husband of Miss Universe

Assassination has always been Israel's main weapon for targeting the leaders of the Palestinian resistance, but the Red Prince, who astounded Israel and its intelligence apparatus and caused it global embarrassment, had a different opinion after thwarting five assassination attempts before his last assassination attempt in 1979 succeeded.

This Saturday, January 22, marks the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of the leader in the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Black September organization, Ali Hassan Salameh, who, for his outrageous wealth and handsomeness, managed to make the Lebanese Miss Universe, Georgina Rizk, in love with him and chose to be his second wife. 1978.

The Red Prince, who was nicknamed "The Prince" because of his wealth and living conditions, and "Al-Ahmar" refers to his struggle in the ranks of the Palestinian resistance, enjoyed overwhelming popularity in the Arab street in general and the Palestinian in particular, because of his strong and attractive personality, which despite the wealth of his family, he decided to join To the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon after receiving his military training in Cairo and Moscow.

After 5 failed assassination attempts, the Mossad succeeded in assassinating the Palestinian leader Ali Hassan, who was responsible for the security apparatus of the Fatah movement, and Israel accused him of being the main planner of the Munich operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance in 1972, on January 22, 1979, in the center of the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

Birth and upbringing

Ali Hassan Salameh was born on April 1, 1941 in the village of Qula, in the Lydda district, to a wealthy family. His father is the fighter Hassan Salama, who was one of the most prominent leaders of the Holy Jihad Army, which was led by Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini in the 1948 war. After the destruction of his village by Zionist gangs in 1948 The Salama family took refuge in Lebanon before moving after several years to Ramallah in Palestine, where Ali Hassan Salameh completed his high school studies there, then traveled to Switzerland to study languages, and from there to Germany before returning to Cairo, where he studied commerce and graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Faculty of Commerce at Cairo University in 1963.

After graduating, Salameh traveled to Kuwait in 1965 to take over the position of director of the Popular Organization Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Kuwait in 1965, and he also headed the Palestine Students Union there.

In the aftermath of the June 1967 setback, Salama traveled to Jordan in order to join the Fatah movement, to be sent to Cairo and then Moscow to be trained by intelligence officers. The movement's intelligence services in Jordan, and subsequently became one of the most prominent confidants to Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization. During that period, Salameh was responsible for the security of Yasser Arafat and the rest of the Palestinian leaders, in addition to being a member of the Revolutionary Council of the "Fatah" movement.

In the seventies of the last century, Salameh was entrusted with several roles, including the task of forming "Force 17", which included military units affiliated with the "Fatah" movement, which authorized him to be a constant companion to Yasser Arafat, and he was among the leadership that accompanied Arafat in his speech to the nations In 1974, he was assigned the task of negotiating with the Maronite leadership in East Beirut after the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war.

Superiority over the Mossad

With the transfer of the Palestinian leadership and resistance to Lebanon following the events of "Black September" that took place in Jordan, Ali Hassan Salameh assumed command of special operations against Israeli intelligence in the world and Europe in particular, from Lebanon since 1970.

In September 1972, a qualitative surprise operation was carried out by the Mossad, the State of Israel and the world at large, when 8 Palestinian militants affiliated with the Black September Organization stormed the headquarters of the Israeli sports delegation participating in the Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, took nine Israeli hostages, and demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian detainees. In Israeli prisons, in exchange for their release.

In addition to the Munich operation, during which Israel refused to negotiate with the kidnappers and ended with the killing of both hostages and kidnappers, the name of the Red Prince was associated with many other specific operations, which were the sending of explosive packages from Amsterdam to many Mossad agents in Europe.

Salameh was also able to discover many Mossad spies within the organization and Beirut in general, and among the most prominent of those he discovered was the famous spy Amina Al-Mufti, who hid under the cover of her work as a volunteer in the Palestinian camps, and was able to penetrate the ranks of the leaders of the Liberation Organization and get close to them, before Ali Hassan Salameh succeeded in discovering order and arrest her.

In one of Israel’s failed attempts to assassinate him in 1973, the Mossad mistakenly killed a Moroccan waiter named Ahmed Bouchikhi, and this case became known as the “Lilhammer” case in Norway, as it led to the arrest of a number of Israeli Mossad agents, and caused great embarrassment to Israel and its intelligence service.

His assassination

After his star rose, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered his assassination after saying, "Find this monster and kill it." There is another version that Golda Meir is the one who called him the Red Prince, after Israel and the Mossad had inflicted many calamities.

In addition to the specific operations he carried out against Israel, Israel received another blow when it discovered that he was able to build communication channels with the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which caused a great shock to the Mossad and the security and political leaders in Tel Aviv.

Which prompted Israel to put its full weight in order to assassinate him, and to accomplish this, the British Mossad of Jewish origin recruited Erica Chambers, who underwent a plastic surgery in order to hide her true appearance, and who in turn was able to disguise and get close to Salama and know the details of his movements, to rise on January 22 1979 detonated a car parked near his car passing through Beirut, which led to the death of him along with his four bodyguards, in addition to the killing of four passers-by.