Imad Mughniyah, Lebanese activist (d. 2008)

Imad Fayez Mughniyeh (Arabic: عماد فايز مغنية‎; 7 December 1962 – 12 February 2008), alias al-Hajj Radwan (الحاج رضوان), was the founding member of Lebanon's Islamic Jihad Organization and number two in Hezbollah's leadership. Information about Mughniyeh is limited, but he is believed to have been Hezbollah's Chief of Staff and understood to have overseen Hezbollah's military, intelligence, and security apparatuses. He was one of the main founders of Hezbollah in the 1980s. He has been described as "a brilliant military tactician and very elusive". He was often referred to as an ‘untraceable ghost’.U.S. and Israeli officials have long accused Mughniyeh of being directly and personally involved in terrorist attacks which has resulted in many suicide bombings, murders, kidnappings, and assassinations. It began with the Beirut barracks bombing and US embassy bombings, both of which took place in 1983 and killed over 350, as well as the kidnapping of dozens of foreigners in Lebanon in the 1980s. He was indicted in Argentina for his alleged role in the 1992 Israeli embassy attack in Buenos Aires. The highest-profile attacks for which it is claimed he is responsible took place in the early 1980s, shortly after the founding of Hezbollah, when Mughniyeh was in his early twenties. U.S. intelligence officials have accused him of killing more United States citizens than any other man prior to the September 11 attacks, and the bombings and kidnappings he is alleged to have organized are credited with all but eliminating and completely removing the US military presence in Lebanon in the 1980s.Mughniyeh was known by his nom de guerre Al-Hajj Radwan. Mughniyeh was included in the European Union's list of wanted terrorists and had a US$5 million bounty on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list. To many in his home country, Lebanon and the Middle East, he’s seen to be a national symbol and hero.As part of a joint CIA – Mossad operation, Mughniyeh was killed on the night of 12 February 2008 by a car bomb that was detonated as he passed by on foot, in the Kafr Sousa neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria.