FROM SUICIDE RECRUIT TO CAPTIVE OF ISRAEL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807140016-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: June 18, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807140016-8
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ARTICLE
ON Paca
la 1_
WASHINGTON POST
18 June 1985
From Suicide Recruit toIJttptth
of Israel
Byr Edward Walsh
IlirrYyN..Fc.t F.er. sedu
(? Lebanese Shiite Moslem -whose dark com-
lis, Mohammed Mahmoud Burro, a 16-year-
RUSALEM, June 17-As a prisoner of the
y cion bears the faint traces of teen-age acne, is
surrounding the hijacking of TWA Flight
-Last February, in the southern Lebanese vil-
ll a of Sir el Gharbiye, Burro was among a num-
ber of men rounded up by the Israeli Army in its
s td ies of sweeps through the Shiite villages of
the area. The slightly built, soft-spoken youth
who likes to work repairing telephones, was sent
to southern Lebanon on a suicide mission to kill
Israeli soldiers.
Before he could do that, the Israelis found him,
probably saving his life but turning him inadver-
tently into one of the figures in another life-and-
death struggle that began last Friday, four
months after his capture.
Now, at least one American is dead and the
lives of more than 30. others are threatened in a
brutal attempt by the hijackers to force the re-
lease of Burro and the other Lebanese Shiite
Moslem prisoners being held by Israel at the
Atlit Prison south of Haifa.
Burro's drama began in Beirut, where he lived
with his family. His journey to southern Lebanon,
to the Israeli prison camp at Ansar and finally to
the Atlit Prison near the Israeli coast, Burro in-
sisted in a recent 90-minute interview, is not one
of Shiite Moslem religious extremism. He is a
Shiite, but not religiously observant, and what he
attempted to do stemmed from factors far re-
moved from any religious impulse or edict to
inflict harm on Israelis, Americans or anyone
else, the youth said.
According to Burro, who describes himself as
detached from the political and religious passions
that enflame the Middle East, he acted out of
fear and under pressure.
. Burro was interviewed at the request of this
reporter last month in a conference room of the
Israeli' Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. He was
brought to it blindfolded from Atlit Prison in an
Israeli military police van.
Burro was interviewed in the presence of sev-
eral Israeli officials, who did not interfere. He
spoke through an interpreter, an Israeli reporter
for Israel Television who had interviewed the
youth earlier for a program broadcast on the
state-run television network.
This article based on the interview was sub-
mitted for prior approval to the Israeli Army
spokesman's office and the Israeli military cen-
sor and was cleared without changes.
Burro, dressed in blue prison garb and wear-
ing sandals, his hair cut close to the scalp, was
interviewed at about the same time that Israel
released 1,150 mostly Palestinian prisoners in a
massive and controversial prisoner exchange
that freed three Israeli soldiers. Ile said the Ldb-
anese Shiite inmates at Atlit knew about the
prisoner exchange, but had not expected to be
included in a deal Israel struck with the Pales-
tinians.
He said the Israelis had told him nothing would
happen to him and that eventually "you will go
out with your comrades." In all likelihood, Burro
and the other prisoners at Atlit now know about
the TWA hijacking and the hijackers' demands
for their release.
Officials in Israel whose intelligence agencies
have interview Burro extensively, say they
believe the youth's story. He is not, they say,
typical of the Amal guerrillas who attacked Is-
raeli forces in southern Lebanon and almost cer-
tainly nothing Ike t fie a en hardened men
involved in the hijacking of the TWA airliner.
According to Israelis who are familiar with the
case, Burro is an example of one "recruiting pro-
cess" in Lebanon. in which vulnerable and often
frightened young people are enlisted as terror-
ists. Another example, they say, is Sana Mhayali,
the 17-year-old called the "bride of the south"
who videotaped a final message that was broad-
cast throughout the Arab World.
"I am a future martyr. I do what I've decided
to do with my soul at peace," she said before
driving a Peugeot packed with explosives to blow
herself up along with two Israeli soldiers near
the southern Lebanese town of Jezzine.
In the recording, Mhaydali said she was acting
"for the love of my people and my country." But
the Israelis say their investigation disclosed that
the unmarried young woman was three months
pregnant, a possibly fatal predicament in her rig-
orously orthodox Shiite family. It was in these
circumstances, they say, that she was recruited
as a suicide car bomber by the small, nonreli.
gious Syrian Popular Party.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807140016-8
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807140016-8
Israeli officials say the Burro and Mhaydali
cases make the frightening phenomenon of the
suicide bomber potentially even more problem-
atic because it cannot be assumed that it is con-
fined to the religiously fanatic. Other seemingly
ordinary people, it appears, can be pressed into
this service.
Burro says he is no religious fanatic and does
not believe in the Shiite view of religious mar-
tyrdom that is so often associated with the sui-
cide car-bombers of the Middle East.
"No one believes that kind of thing," he said.
"No one went to Paradise and came back to say,
'Yes, I saw it and this is true.' "
The middle child in a family of five children, he
grew up in the squalid suburbs south of Beirut
that teem with Shiites, historically the country's
most downtrodden religious group.
Burro's father was a policeman, while young
Mohammed, who quit school after the fifth
grade, worked for the telephone company in Bei-
rut, a job he said he would like to return to. But
by 1984 the constant fighting in Beirut had all
but destroyed the phone system and there was
no work, so Burro joined the fire and rescue bri-
gade of Amal, which is in control of the suburbs
south of the capital.
The trouble started a few months later and
began with his father. The father, already hard
pressed financially because of medical bills stem-
ming from an injury, was involved in an automo-
bile accident in which his car struck a young wo-
man. The woman's family demanded compensa-
tion and Amal settled the claim.
"Amal took it upon itself," Burro said. "I didn't
ask for help. It is usual in our area that Amal
takes care of these things." But that was not the
end of it. Amal began pressing the father to pay
his debt to the militia, Burro said.
"My father sort of ran away from it," he said.
"They knew I was his son," he added, so he was
summoned to a meeting with a man named Abu
Hassan, an Amal official.
Burro said he had never been to southern Leb-
anon and that he and his friends never thought
about that part of the country, which was then in
its third year of Israeli military occupation. But it
as southern Lebanon that Hassan wanted to talk
about.
"He said, 'You have to go to the south because
of your father,' ? Burro said. "He said, 'The
south is on fire, people are going to the south and
they give their lives. If you don't go, someone
else will, but you have to help your family.
" 'Your father hit a girl with his car and you
have to help the situation of your family. If you
go to the South, we'll help you and your family
and you don't have anything to be afraid of.
You'll have a car-an armored car-so go and
don't give a damn.' "
Then, Burro said, Hassan sent him to a Shiite
religious leader named Haj Ali with instructions
to give the correct answers to any questions
about his religious practices. "He started to give
me a religious lesson, about how those who give
their life for God go to Paradise," Burro said. "He
started to tell me how one stays alive, actually
doesn't die. I said okay."
But Burro said he did not believe this and was
reluctant to agree to a mission in southern Leb-
anon. He told his friends about it, and they told
him he was crazy, he said. Hassan also promised
him a bulletproof jacket, saying he might be in-
jured but would not die. Burro said he was aware
of the contradiction between this and Ali's lesson
on the glory of martyrdom. He said he believed
Ali's version of what was being asked.
But after a week of thinking it over, Burro said
he returned to Hassan and reluctantly agreed to
the suicide mission. He was given another reli-
gious lecture by Ali and some quick driving lessons
around the Beirut suburbs. Finally, he was taken
to a man named Sheik Hassan, a prominent Shiite
religious leader who gave an official Islamic bless-
ing for the mission and had arranged for a shafaa,
a Shiite practice in which a religious leader autho-
rizes a person to pray for the soul of another.
In mid-February, two automobiles set out
from the Beirut suburbs for the Lebanese port
city of Sidon to the south.
The leaders, apparently seasoned Amal oper-
atives, were named Nour and Malik, Burro said.
They did not talk to him on the trip south, but
outside the car they talked between themsieves
and he was able to hear them, Burro said.
"Nour told Malik, 'I have to drive into Israeli
soldiers and not be afraid and that I should take
care to be far away from civilians,' " he said. He
never saw the actual suicide car. He was never
told his target, but understood it to be the Israeli
military headquarters in Nabatiyah, the main
Shiite city of southern Lebanon.
Burro said he heard Nour telling Malik about
two buttons in the car, one on the left and one on
the right of the steering wheel, but he did not
know what these were. Israeli sources have
since said that some of the suicide vehicles have
been equipped with these buttons, one that is
pushed when the car is started and automatically
explodes the bomb if the car is turned off, the
other to be pushed to detonate the bomb man-
ually when the driver reaches his target.
From Sidon, the two cars continued south,
heading inland on the road that leads to the vil-
lage of Zrariye, an Amal staging area for attacks
into that part of southern Lebanon that was still
occupied by the Israelis. Cars were changed, and
other men joined the convoy. At about 9 that
night, Burro said, they reached Sir el Gharbiye,
where the others kissed him goodbye and said
they would pick him up in the morning.
The Israeli soldiers came at 6 the next morn-
ing, Feb. 23, sweeping through an area they had
evacuated only a few days before. Burro, who
had spent the night at the home of a man named
All, was awakened with the news that the village
was surrounded.
He and All fled, Burro seeking shelter in a
nearby house. There was gunfire, and he heard
Ali scream. "He is now in heaven," Burro said, a
faint smile crossing his face.
The Israelis found Burro, took him with the
other men and youths to the village school and
questioned him. He was taken to Nabatiyah,
where, after 15 days of interrogation, Burro
said, he admitted the purpose of his presence in
southern Lebanon. He added that he has been
treated well by the Israelis, whom he found to be
"nothing like anything any of us thought of
them."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807140016-8