The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks

by Edward Mickolus

  On August 11, 1998, the Tanzanian police announced that they had arrested 30 foreigners in connection with the blast. They included six Iraqis, six Sudanese, a Somali, and a Turk. The Sudanese included a teen and a man who claimed to work for the Saudi Embassy. The Iraqis included a teacher, a civil servant, a telecommunications technician, an engineer, and an agricultural engineer (the sixth Iraqi was not identified). Fourteen lacked passports and could not give a reason for being in the country.

  Epilogue. Pakistani officials arrested a Jordanian-born Palestinian, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, an engineer, at Karachi Airport the day of the bombings and returned him to Kenya on August 14, 1998, for traveling on a false Yemeni passport with a fake visa, using the name Abdul Bast Awadah. He had flown to Pakistan on August 6, 1998. He said his spiritual guide was bin Laden and that he was attempting to seek refuge with him in Afghanistan. He claimed that the bomb contained 1,760 pounds of TNT and was assembled over several days at the hotel under his direction. Police held three other people in connection with the attack. Two names given were Mohammed Saleh and Abdullah (identities uncertain). Odeh also claimed that his group had taken part in the October 1993 attack on U.S. forces in Mogadishu, Somalia, which killed 18 Americans.

  On August 18, 1998, authorities raided two rooms in the seedy Hilltop Hotel that had been occupied by two Palestinians, a Saudi, and an Egyptian from August 3 to August 7, 1998. Odeh said the bomb was made between August 4 and August 6, 1998, in the rooms.

  On August 19, 1998, the Taliban refused to turn bin Laden over to the West, even if the West had proof that he was behind the bombings.

  On August 20, 1998, the United States fired 79 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Zhawar Kili al-Badr paramilitary training camps in Afghanistan and Sudan’s Shifa pharmaceutical plant that was believed to be developing EMPTA, a VX chemical weapons precursor. All facilities were suspected of being used in planning new anti-U.S. attacks. Bin Laden’s terrorist training complex in Khost, Afghanistan, 94 miles southeast of Kabul, just inside the border with Pakistan, was deemed by President Clinton as “one of the most active terrorist bases in the world.” Initial damage was reported to be moderate to heavy. Afghanistan said 21 people were killed and more than 50 wounded in the camps around Khost, near the Pakistan border.

  On August 21, 1998, the Nairobi Daily News reported that Khalid Mohammed was identified as the man who threw the grenade at the guards before escaping. He was picked out of a police lineup by witnesses.

  On September 5, 1998, Tanzania arrested two suspects. A Nairobi suspect, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (alias Harun Fazul), is an explosives expert.

  On September 16, 1998, German police arrested Mamduh Mahmud Salim, an al Qaeda member who was described as a major financial operative who also procured weapons. A sealed warrant seeking his arrest was recently filed in Manhattan.

  On December 19, 1998, the FBI arrested U.S. citizen Wadih el-Hage, a Lebanese Christian who once served as bin Laden’s personal secretary. He lived and worked with Mohammed while working in the gem business in Kenya until 1997. He helped Odeh obtain an identity card and sent him to Somalia in 1997 for bin Laden. The U.S. State Department announced a $2 million reward for the capture of Mohammed, who was charged in the Kenya attack. On September 21, 1998, el-Hage was indicted with eight counts of perjury. Federal prosecutors said that he once purchased guns in Texas for one of the 1993 WTC bombers, and that he had contacts with Sayyid A. Nosair, who helped plan the WTC bombing and who killed Jewish Defense League leader Meir Kahane in 1990.

  On September 21, 1998, Egyptian Mustafa Mahmoud Said Ahmed (alias Said Ahmed and Saleh Aben Alahales) and Tanzanian Rashid Saleh Hemed, Zanzibar native, were charged in a Dar es Salaam courtroom with 11 counts of murder.

  On October 7, 1998, a federal grand jury in New York handed down a 238-count indictment, charging several of bin Laden’s disciples of planning to kill Americans. The plot included the Tanzania and Kenya bombings and the training of militias that attacked U.S. soldiers in Somalia in 1993. The plot named U.S. citizen el-Hage, Mohammed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali, Azzam (who apparently died in the Nairobi blast), Odeh, Mohammed, and Salim. Unindicted coconspirators included Zawahiri; Ahmed Refai Taha, Gama’at leader; and former Gama’at leader Sheikh Abdel-Rahman. Prosecutors also sought the extradition of Khaled alFawaz, a bin Laden spokesman who was arrested in September 1998 in London. Mohammed, Odeh, and Owhali were charged with 224 counts of murder. Odeh and Mohammed were charged with training the Somalis. On October 8, 1998, el-Hage, Odeh, and Owhali pleaded not guilty.

  On November 5, 1998, the U.S. State Department offered a $5 million reward for bin Laden’s arrest. Bin Laden and his top military commander, Muhammed Atef, were indicted by a New York federal grand jury in U.S. District Court on 238 counts for the August 7, 1998, bombings and for conspiracy to kill Americans overseas.

  On December 16, 1998, the U.S. District Court in Manhattan issued a 238-count indictment against fugitives Mustafa Mohammed Fadhil, an Egyptian; Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, a Tanzanian; Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian; Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam, a Kenyan; and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, a Kenyan, on charges of bringing the vehicles, including the 1987 Nissan Atlas truck that carried the bomb and the oxygen and acetylene tanks used in the Dar es Salaam attack.

  On July 5, 1999, President Clinton signed Executive Order 13129 that banned all commercial and financial dealings between the United States and Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia, which was providing refuge to bin Laden. The order froze all Taliban assets in the United States, barred the import of products from Afghanistan, and made it illegal for U.S. firms to sell goods and services to the Taliban.

  London police arrested Ibrahim Hussein Abd-al-Hadi Eidarous and Adel Meguid Abd-al-Bary on extradition warrants on July 11, 1999, at a request from the United States. Their fingerprints appeared on originals of faxes that claimed credit for the bombings.

  On October 8, 1999, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, a Tanzanian whose house was used as a bomb factory and who was arrested in South Africa on October 5, 1999, was charged in federal court in New York on charges of murder and conspiracy in the two bombings.

  On December 22, 2004, the Tanzanian High Court freed Hemed, even though a bomb detonator was discovered in his house and he admitted knowing people involved in the bombing.

  On April 13, 2006, Egyptian explosives expert Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah was killed in a helicopter strike in North Waziristan.

  On March 12, 2007, Tawfiq bin Attash told a U.S. military tribunal in Guantanamo that he organized the USS Cole attack and the Africa embassy bombings.

  On November 17, 2010, Ghailani was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to damage or destroy U.S. property but acquitted of 284 counts of murder and attempted murder.

  Osama bin Laden died in a SEAL raid in Abbotabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011.

  On June 7, 2011, Somali officials killed Mohammed and a second al Qaeda operative in a shoot-out at a Mogadishu checkpoint.

  Several suspects awaited trial in Guantanamo Bay military prison in late 2013.

  August 15, 1998

  Omagh, Northern Ireland, Bombing

  Overview: Efforts to end the decades-long Irish Troubles came in fits and starts as various legal parties and underground factions of Catholics and Protestants faced off, often demanding irreconcilable terms. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) often saw tiny but recalcitrant groups of thugs refuse to accept negotiated agreements and start up their own terrorist campaigns. One of the most active was the Real IRA, which conducted a record mass-casualty attack in Northern Ireland. Omagh became a rallying cry for peace activists on both sides of the dispute and both sides of the border.

  Incident: On August 15, 1998, the Real IRA, an IRA splinter group, set off a 500-pound car bomb in the Omagh town square during the afternoon, killing 29 people, including babies, grandfathers, and a pregnant woman, and wounding more than 350 others. The bombing was the bloodiest single incident in three decades of sectarian violenc
e. The group said it was “part of an ongoing war against the Brits,” but that “it was not our intention . . . to kill any civilians.” The group claimed that it had given a 40-minute warning. However, police said that the warning said the bomb was near the courthouse at the west end of town. Shoppers were directed to move east down Market Street, where the bomb really was. Police believed that the bomb might have been placed by a young terrorist who did not know the town’s layout. Several thousand people representing Catholics and Protestants conducted an outdoor memorial service.

  The maroon Vauxhall sedan used for the bomb was stolen in Ireland the previous week.

  On August 17, 1998, police arrested five suspected Real IRA members, including Shane Mackey, son of Francis Mackey, an Omagh city council member and chairman of the 32-County Sovereignty Committee, a group opposed to the peace plan and believed to be the political arm of the Real IRA. The group was headed by Mickey McKevitt, 49, a former senior IRA member. He had served as the IRA’s quartermaster. He had been shot in both legs by the IRA in 1975 for breaking rules. However, he never revealed the names of his attackers.

  The United States refused a visa to Bernadette Sands-McKevitt, a spokeswoman for the Real IRA’s political front. She is the sister of the late Bobby Sands, an IRA member who died during a prison hunger strike in 1981. Store owners demanded her eviction from a local mall where she had a print shop.

  Britain and Ireland vowed to institute a severe crackdown on terrorists. On September 3, 1998, the British and Irish parliaments approved emergency legislation making it easier to arrest suspected terrorists and hold them without bail. Judges were authorized to order the jailing of suspects without bail if a police official testified that they are believed to be terrorists; corroborating evidence was no longer needed. The statutes also permit courts to consider an accused’s refusal to answer questions as evidence of guilt.

  On September 7, 1998, the Real IRA declared “a complete cessation of all military activity,” although it did not apologize for the bombing.

  On September 21, 1998, police arrested nine people in dawn raids on both sides of the Irish border. Irish police grabbed three men aged 19–34, while Northern Ireland authorities detained another 6. Northern Ireland authorities released the six on September 27, 1998.

  Sinead O’Connor, U2, Liam Neeson, Boyzone, and Van Morrison joined several other rock stars in releasing an album entitled Across the Bridge of Hope on November 30, 1998; the profits went to the victims. Neeson read a poem written by Shaun McLaughlin, 12, who was killed in the bombing.

  On February 22, 1999, Belfast police began interrogating nine men on suspicion of involvement in the bombing. The Royal Ulster Constabulary said they were questioning six men in a crackdown on the IRA. Irish Republic police released two of five men they arrested on February 21, 1999, in a related operation. On February 23, 1999, a spokesman for the Garda Siochana, Ireland’s national police, said it would charge a man with two offenses in Dublin’s three-judge no-jury Special Criminal Court that hears terrorist offenses. He would be accused of being a member of an illegal paramilitary group that broke away from the IRA, and another, unnamed charge.

  On February 27, 1999, Irish police questioned two more male unnamed suspects, who were detained in Dundalk. Another man was arrested in connection with the inquiry in another border town. The next day, Dublin police arrested a woman in connection with the case. She was held and questioned under Section 30 of Ireland’s Offenses Against the State Act, which allows suspects to be held for up to 72 hours.

  On February 24, 1999, Irish authorities charged Colm Murphy, 46, a building contractor and pub owner. He appeared in Dublin’s Special Criminal Court three days after police arrested him at his Dundalk farmhouse, 50 miles north of Dublin.

  Police in both parts of Ireland arrested 10 suspected IRA dissidents on June 20, 1999. They had arrested but freed without charge nearly 100 people in the case. The next day, Irish police arrested two women in Cavan and Monaghan counties and a man in his twenties in Dundalk. On June 23, 1999, Irish police detained two more men in Dundalk.

  As of August 14, 1999, no one was in jail for the crime. Two dozen people had been arrested, some more than once, all but one had been released without charges. Murphy was charged with conspiracy but was free on bail; no trial had been scheduled. On January 2, 2002, Murphy was convicted of conspiracy. On January 25, 2002, he was sentenced to 14 years in jail by a three-judge panel in Dublin. The panel called the wealthy pub owner a “republican terrorist of long standing.” Murphy won his appeal and was freed after posting bail on January 28, 2005. The judge said that detectives had lied about the evidence.

  On September 3, 2003, a 34-year-old IRA dissident was arrested in Newry on suspicion of involvement. He was charged with conspiracy to cause explosions and possession of explosives. Police charged him on February 8, 2005, saying he stole the car used by the bombers.

  On May 26, 2005, Belfast prosecutor charged suspected IRA dissident Sean Gerard Hoey, 35, an unemployed electrician, with 29 counts of murder. On December 20, 2007, he was found not guilty of all 50 charges related to Omagh.

  On June 9, 2009, the Belfast High Court ruled that the victims’ families could collect $2.4 million in damages from organizers and bombers McKevitt, Liam Campbell, Murphy, and Seamus Daly.

  * * *

  The 2000s

  While al Qaeda had established itself among terrorism-watchers as a major threat to Western security, it had not permanently grabbed the headlines until the hijacking and use of jetliners as weapons on September 11, 2001. The 9/11 body count of just under 3,000 victims broke all records. Records for economic impact were also topped, including damage estimates in the billions and secondary effects on stock markets, which saw a $1.3 trillion loss in the days after the attacks. More than a hundred thousand jobs were lost. Significant financial and social costs were incurred from new and heightened security measures. The attacks led to the United States and like-minded nations invading two nations—Afghanistan and Iraq—believed involved in the attacks, or at least neck-deep in supporting some form of international terrorists. Preventive security measures— profiling, pat downs, magnetometers, U.S. creation of a new Cabinet Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration, and reorganization of the Intelligence Community—in response to the attacks were matched with terrorist adaptation of methods. Although “classical” hijacking was probably stopped—there are still rare instances—terrorists nonetheless tried to attack airliners with shoe and underwear bombs and binary explosives, and to use planes as methods to deliver bombs. The success of any of these methods would have added the event(s) to the 50 Worst list.

  In the 1990s, al Qaeda tended to take several years to develop spectacular 50 Worst -worthy attacks and rarely took credit for the attacks. Post9/11 affiliates became far more ready to claim responsibility, even for comparatively amateurish attacks and attempts.

  With the main leadership—Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and a succession of third-in-commands whose life spans were comparable to fruit flies—of al Qaeda on the run or in graves following the incursions into their Afghan safe havens, the group continued its strategy of evolving rather than giving up. The group soon created a series of offshoots, some with formal franchise arrangements with al Qaeda in their names— al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, etc.—and some with extensive ties but no official commandand-control agreements, such as Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and various Philippine groups. Still other cells trained and sometimes obtained weapons from al Qaeda and Taliban remnants, then went on to conduct their own independent operations. Yet other lone wolves who on occasion had met with some flavor of al Qaeda leaders or franchisees, or were merely “selfradicalized” by studying the writings and YouTube videos of al Qaeda, popped up around the world. While the latter are in theory especially difficult to find, inept operational tradecraft of the loners, support for societal stability of peaceful Mu
slim communities who were quick to point out potential miscreants to government officials, and patient sting operations led to foiling numerous plots that would otherwise have added to the list of 50 Worst.

  International revulsion at the 9/11—and later 3/11 and 7/7—attacks led to an extensive coalition working to “find, fix, and finish” terrorists around the world. This in turn led to the arrests of thousands of terrorist suspects, including numerous “high value” terrorists, who were initially held in local prisons before being turned over to U.S. authorities. The cooperative efforts were so successful in taking terrorists off the streets that the United States was faced with a growing inventory problem. It was at least temporarily resolved with the opening of a terrorist detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay military base on Cuban shores. The detention without trial of scores of major threats to security caused constant tension between civil libertarians and potential prosecutors regarding the ultimately juridical disposition of these individuals. As of this writing, the debate continues.

  As in earlier decades, the worst of the 2000s included attacks against transportation modes—planes, trains, ships—and symbolic soft targets, including mosques, schools, and theaters. Body counts, particularly of those who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, continued to rise. While the literature of academic studies of terrorism debates whether “everything changed” after 9/11—and most garden variety attacks continued to mimic previous patterns of few casualties and exit strategies for the terrorists—suicide bombings and tactics difficult to defend against continued to increase in popularity. That said, the worst for this decade, except for occasional Chechen barricade-and-hostage situations causing hundreds of deaths, shows a virtual extinction of end-game calculations by the terrorists. Those that conducted more spectacular incidents were looking to kill, not bargain. Hostage-takers tended to go for a quick headline, then kill the hostages, rather than wait patiently, sometimes years, for negotiations to develop, as had been the case with Hizballah in the 1980s.