The ANO (Abu Nidal Organization), even at the height of its activity, has never enjoyed broad popular support among the Palestinian people, and its active members have never exceeded a few hundred.

Although it was among the world's most violent organizations engaging in terrorism in the 1970s and '80s, the group's activities had diminished in the 1990s.

Abu Nidal is condemned to death, again in absentia, by a court in Jordan in 2001 for the 1994 murder of a Jordanian diplomat.