Sabri Khalil al-Banna (May 1937 – August 16, 2002), known as Abu Nidal, is the founder of Fatah: The Revolutionary Council, a militant Palestinian splinter group more commonly known as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO).
At the height of its militancy in the 1970s and 1980s, the ANO is widely regarded as the most ruthless of the Palestinian groups.
Abu Nidal ("father of struggle") forms the ANO in October 1974 after a split from Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).[
Acting as a freelance contractor, Abu Nidal is believed to have ordered attacks in twenty countries, killing over three hundred and injuring over six hundred and fifty.
The group's operations include the Rome and Vienna airport attacks on December 27, 1985, when gunmen open fire on passengers in simultaneous shootings at El Al ticket counters, killing twenty.
Patrick Seale, Abu Nidal's biographer, writes of the shootings that their "random cruelty marked them as typical Abu Nidal operations".
Abu Nidal dies after a shooting in his Baghdad apartment in August 2002.
Palestinian sources believes he was killed on the orders of Saddam Hussein, while Iraqi officials insist he had committed suicide during an interrogation.
"He was the patriot turned psychopath", David Hirst wrote in the Guardian on the news of his death
"He served only himself, only the warped personal drives that pushed him into hideous crime. He was the ultimate mercenary."
