PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Fatah- The Revolutionary Council
The ANO was founded by Abu Nidal in 1974 after he split from PLO, The Palestinian Liberation Organization. The ANO, also known as the Fatah revoutionary council, was active largely in the 1980's as a terrorist organization. They are considered largely inactive nowadays.
The ANO strongly opposes the PLO and any compromise with Israel in regards to their being a state. They also oppose Western interference in Middle east and Palestine.
Best Known Attacks
- the 1994 assassination of the senior Jordanian diplomat Naeb Imran Maaytah in Beirut;
- the January 1991 assassination of Abu Iyad, the PLO's second-in-command after Arafat, and another PLO official in Tunis;
- a September 1986 shooting at the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul, Turkey, that killed twenty-two;
- the December 1985 attempted hijacking of a Pan Am flight in Karachi, Pakistan, in which twenty-two people died;
- the December 1985 simultaneous attacks on U.S. and Israeli airport counters in Rome and Vienna, which killed eighteen people and injured 111;
- the June 1982 attempt to assassinate Israeli ambassador Shlomo Argov in London, which helped trigger Israel's invasion of Lebanon.
Currently, the remains of ANO is thought to have taken residence in Iraq. In the past, it was known to attack a wide range of Western, Israeli, and Arab targets in over twenty countries. In it's day, the organization was also sponsored by countries such as Syria, Libya, and Iraq. This sponsorship was how the organization functioned, as they gave the group money.
As you can tell by the attacks, this group had a global scale because it interacted with other countries, such as the US.
I believe this group fights as terrorists and little else. They are not freedom fighters because they refuse to compromise with Israel about having their own state and lash out with violence where there are other peaceful means to accomplish their goal. Nothing about this group surprised me except that they have diminished, but that can be explained by the supposed death of their leader in 2002.