Palestinian terrorist eludes U.S. in Iraq

Trying to sabotage airlines
With the assistance of Iraqi intelligence, Ibrahim carried out many attacks. He struck in London, Rome, Athens. In West Berlin, an infant was killed and 24 wounded after one of his bombs detonated at an Israeli-owned restaurant.

His most well-known plans, however, involved trying to sabotage Pan Am and El Al airlines.

On Aug. 11, 1982, Mohammed Rashed, a top 15 May lieutenant, boarded a flight from Baghdad to Tokyo along with his Austrian-born wife Christine Pinter and their child.

Before Rashed, Ibrahim's apprentice, disembarked in Tokyo, he activated a bomb under the cushion of window seat 47K. Once on the ground, Rashed and his wife got off the plane, which continued to Honolulu. Ozawa, who was on vacation with his family, sat in Rashed's seat.

While the bomb killed Ozawa and injured 14 others, Rashed's mission was only a partial success. Despite a large hole in the cabin floor exposing the cargo area, the plane managed to land safely.

"I'm sure it was meant to blow up the whole plane," said Dave Magness, a former CIA bomb technician who disarmed several Ibrahim devices by hand.

The bomb had rattled the FBI and CIA. How did the bomber get past airport security without being detected? What about bomb-sniffing dogs?

Two weeks later in Rio de Janeiro, a cleaning crew discovered a bomb that had malfunctioned aboard another Pan Am flight. Like the earlier one, the bomb used an e-cell and had been placed under a window seat and was designed to punch a hole in the side of the plane.

FBI was stumped
The FBI was stumped. Denny Kline, a retired FBI explosives expert who investigated 15 May, had only seen the e-cell once before, in a bomb placed by a Black September terrorist at JFK Airport in 1973 that had failed to detonate. But that was a different type of e-cell, Kline said.

He knew the bombs were connected, but little else. Rashed and Pinter had used bogus Moroccan passports to buy their airline tickets. The FBI didn't even know their true names and a recovered fingerprint that would later implicate Rashed led nowhere. Photographs of them were essentially useless.

And Ibrahim? He was a ghost — running an organization the FBI had yet to tie to the attacks.

FBI agents finally got a break in 1984 after they went to Switzerland to interview Adnan Awad, a 15 May defector, according to federal court documents.

Awad had met Ibrahim and Rashed in late 1981 in Baghdad. Ibrahim had asked Awad to carry out an attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Geneva and had given him a suitcase bomb with an e-cell. When Awad refused, Ibrahim shut down a construction site where he had a contract and froze his bank accounts.

"I was terrified," Awad later testified. "That's when I realized that something serious was going on and that Ibrahim had connections to the Iraqi authorities. I went to his office because I realized he was very powerful, and I told him I would do whatever he wants."

But Awad didn't have the stomach for blowing up people. In 1982, he gave the suitcase bomb to Swiss authorities who asked him to call Ibrahim to verify his story. He did. And Ibrahim dispatched a courier with money who was also carrying a vinyl shoulder bag when the Swiss arrested him.

'It was the crown jewel'
When FBI agents arrived in 1984, they were able to examine for the first time the items the Swiss had confiscated.

"The bag had a missing piece from the bottom of it," Kline said. "That liner was used to wrap up the device we recovered from Rio. That's how we positively connected all these devices together. It was the crown jewel."

Agents also asked Awad if he recognized the photographs of the mysterious Rashed and Pinter.

Yes, he knew them. He also betrayed them. The FBI had finally connected Rashed, Pinter and Ibrahim to the 1982 Pan Am bombing.

The discovery helped lead to the trio's sealed indictment in 1987 in Washington, D.C.

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