Imad Mughniyah

Who was Imad Mughniyah?

Imad Fayez Mughniyeh, also transliterated Mughniyya, Mughniyah, Mogniyah, alias al-Hajj Radwan, was a senior member of Lebanon's Hezbollah. Information about Mughniyeh is limited, but he is generally understood to have been a principal leader and operative for a number of years within Hezbollah's military, intelligence, and security apparatuses. He may also have been among the founders of Hezbollah in the 1980s. In Lebanon and the greater Middle East he is associated with the successful defense of southern Lebanon against the 2006 Israeli incursion.

U.S. and Israeli officials have accused Mughniyeh of association with many bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations, beginning 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 Mughniyah was in his early twenties. U.S. officials have accused him of killing more United States citizens than any other militant prior to the 2001 US attacks, and the bombings and kidnappings he is alleged to have organized are credited with all but eliminating the US military presence in Lebanon in the 1980s.