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Wilmington, North Carolina once had a thriving Black middle class and an elected interracial government. In 1898 white supremacists used violence to overthrow that government, kill Black residents and drive many others from the city.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
 | This article needs more citations. (May 2021) |
Muhammad Zaidan | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Muhammad Zaidan 10 December 1948 |
| Died | 8 March 2004 (aged 55) Iraq? |
Resting place | Damascus, Syria |
| Other name | Abū-‘Abbās or Muhammad ‘Abbās |
| Known for | Founder and Leader of Palestinian Liberation Front |
Muhammad Zaidan aka Muhammad Abbas (10 December 1948 – 8 March 2004), sometimes known as Abu Abbas (Arabic: أبو عباس Abū ʿAbbās; /ˈɑːbuː əˈbɑːs/ⓘ AH-boo ə-BAHSS), was (with Tal'at Ya'qoub) a founder of the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF) Organization.[1]
Zaidan was born in 1948 in Safed, Palestine,[2] though other sources state that he was born in a Syrian refugee camp.[3]
He studied at the Damascus University where he joined the radical, pro-Syrian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) under Ahmed Jibril in 1968. In 1977, major disagreements arose between the PFLP-GC, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and other Palestinian factions based in Lebanon. Zaidan, who opposed Syrian involvement in the Lebanese war, left the PFLP-GC and created the PLF with Talaat Yaacoub, which eventually split into three separate factions (and then later re-merged). Zaidan's faction of the PLF, which was the largest of the three, moved its headquarters to Tunisia.
Since its inception in 1977, the Abbas-led PLF was a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization and received support from both the PLO and Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. Unlike the PFLP-GC, the PLF has supported peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Zaidan was elected to the executive committee of the PLO in 1984 and represented the Palestinian National Council (PNC) in 1989 during peace negotiations with Israel. Although Zaidan was wanted by Israel for his involvement in guerrilla attacks against Israel (including attacks against civilians) throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, Israel allowed him to travel freely in the Gaza Strip throughout the 1990s because he supported the peace negotiations. One notable attack by the PLF under Zaidan's leadership resulted in the deaths of Danny Haran (age 28) and his two daughters, Einat (4) and Yael (2) in April 1979 in their Nahariya, Israel home by Samir Kuntar.[citation needed]
Throughout the 1980s, the PLF launched attacks on both civilian and military targets in the north of Israel, across the Lebanese border. In 1985 he masterminded the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. During the hijacking, 69-year-old American Jewish passenger Leon Klinghoffer, who used a wheelchair, was shot dead and thrown overboard. The four hijackers, fearful of United States military intervention, surrendered to Egypt in return for safe passage out of Egypt, based on the pretext that they had done no harm to any of the passengers. Four F-14 aircraft from the U.S. 6th Fleet intercepted the plane carrying the hijackers to Tunisia and escorted it to Sigonella, a NATO base in Italy. There they discovered that Zaidan and PLO political officer Hassan were also on the plane. Insider deals within the Italian government made them both flown from Sigonella to Rome.[4] From there, Zaidan and Hassan boarded a Yugoslav civilian airliner bound for Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Despite American requests for the extradition of Zaidan from Yugoslavia, he was not extradited because of Yugoslav relations with the PLO. He then flew to Aden, South Yemen and from there to Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein sheltered him from extradition to Italy. He remained in Iraq and commanded the PLF (reunited in 1989) until the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Italy sentenced Zaidan in absentia to five terms of life imprisonment for his role in the Achille Lauro hijacking. He was also wanted in the US for crimes including terrorism, piracy and murder. In 1996, he apologized for the Achille Lauro hijacking and the murder of Leon Klinghoffer and advocated peace talks between Palestinians and Israel; the apology was rejected by the US government and Klinghoffer's family.
Subsequent to the US invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003, Zaidan was captured by American Special Forces on 14 April 2003 while he was attempting to flee from Baghdad to Syria. Italy subsequently requested his extradition.[citation needed] The Pentagon reported on 9 March 2004 that Zaidan had died the previous day, of natural causes, while in U.S. custody. The PLF accused the Americans of assassinating their leader.[citation needed] The U.S. authorities agreed to give Abbas' body to the Palestine Red Crescent Society for burial in Ramallah on the West Bank.[citation needed] However, his burial there was blocked by the Israeli authorities, and he was buried in the Martyrs' Cemetery in Damascus instead.[citation needed]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Muhammad Zaidan aka Muhammad Abbas (10 December 1948 – 8 March 2004), sometimes known as Abu Abbas (Arabic: أبو عباس Abū ʿAbbās; AH-boo ə-BAHSS), was (with Tal'at Ya'qoub) a founder of the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF) Organization.
The Palestinian Liberation Front (Arabic: جبهة التحرير الفلسطينية, PLF), sometimes referred to in English as the Palestine Liberation Front - Abu Abbas Faction or Palestine Liberation Front, is a minor left-wing Palestinian political faction. It carried out the Achille Lauro hijacking in 1985, among other attacks that killed civilians, and is proscribed in several countries as a terrorist organisation. In 1996, the party took part in the 1996 Palestinian general election, winning 0.11% of the vote. The party also ran in the 2006 Palestinian legislative election under the name ‘Martyr Abu Abbas’, and received 0.30% of the vote. Leaders of the PLF throughout its history have included Ahmed Jibril, Muhammad Zaidan (Abu Abbas), Talaat Yaqoub, and the current leader, Wasel Abu Yousef. It is not to be confused with the Palestine Liberation Front, a separate organisation with a similar name, founded by Shafiq al-Hout, Ibrahim Abu Lughod, Khaled al-Yashruti, Samira Azzam and others in Beirut in 1961 or 1963.
Mohamed Salah al-Din al-Halim Zaidan (Arabic: محمد صلاح الدين الحليم زيدان; born 11 April 1960/1963), commonly known by his nom de guerre Saif al-Adel (Arabic: سيف العدل, lit. 'sword of justice'), is an Egyptian Islamic militant who is the de facto leader of al-Qaeda. Previously an Egyptian Army officer, al-Adel fought the Soviets as an Afghan Arab before becoming a founding member of al-Qaeda. He is a member of al-Qaeda's Majlis al-Shura and has headed the organization's military committee since the death of Mohammad Atef in 2001. It is alleged (by unconfirmed accounts from various intelligence agencies) that as of 2023 he is living in Iran along with several other senior members of the group, though this remains unproven. Once a colonel in Egypt's El-Sa'ka Forces during the 1980s, the Egyptian military expelled al-Adel in 1987 and arrested him alongside thousands of Islamists amid allegations of attempting to rebuild the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and plans to topple Hosni Mubarak. The charges were dismissed, though al-Adel soon left Egypt for Afghanistan, joining Afghan Arab mujahideen resisting the Soviet invasion under the banner of al-Qaeda forerunner Maktab al-Khidamat in 1988. al-Adel would go on to become the chief of newly formed al-Qaeda's media department, and was involved in the production of Osama bin Laden's videos which quickly found audiences worldwide. By the early nineties, al-Adel is thought to have then traveled to southern Lebanon with Abu Talha al-Sudani, Saif al-Islam al-Masri, Abu Ja`far al-Masri, and Abu Salim al-Masri, where they trained alongside Hezbollah al-Hejaz. Sometime after, al-Adel became a member of the AQ Shura council, and by 1992 had become a member of its military committee, then headed by Mohammad Atef. He has provided military and intelligence training to members of al-Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sudan, and to anti-American Somali tribes. Shifting to Khartoum in 1992, al-Adel taught militant recruits how to handle explosives. It is possible that his trainees included Somalis who participated in the first Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. Al-Adel also established the al-Qaeda training facility at Ras Kamboni in Somalia near the Kenyan border. The 9/11 Commission Report states that in July 2001, three senior AQ Shura council members including al-Adel, Saeed al-Masri, and Mahfouz Ould al-Walid opposed bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri's decision to execute the September 11 attacks. Following the subsequent United States invasion of Afghanistan, al-Adel was given secret asylum in Iran during which he was monitored by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In 2015, al-Qaeda made a deal with the IRGC's Qods Force to return Saif to Afghanistan, though he reportedly refused, stating a preference for maintaining Iran as his base of activities. al-Adel is currently under indictment in the United States, with charges related to his alleged role in the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. Before Zawahiri's assassination in 2022, Saif al-Adel had become the effective micro-manager of field commanders of AQ branches in Somalia, Yemen and Syria from his communication base in Iran. A 2023 United Nations report concluded that al-Adel had been named de facto leader of al-Qaeda but that he had not been formally proclaimed as its emir due to "political sensitives" of the Taliban government in acknowledging the killing of Zawahiri in Kabul and the "theological and operational" challenges posed by location of al-Adel in Shia-led Iran. With the death of Zawahiri, Saif al-Adel is one of al-Qaeda's few surviving founding members. al-Adel has been tightening his grip over the AQ branches, promoting a loyalist base of field commanders and increasing his influence in the group's branch in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP, while waiting to be officially declared emir. Saif has made attempts to shift AQ's central command to Yemen, a country where the group has long had a branch.
Sheikh Khalid Mohammad Hamad Al Rashid is a Saudi Arabian citizen who was arrested in the mid 2000's for his religious expression and associations. Opinions on the date and reason for Al Rashid's arrest differ. Humans rights organisation Alkarama allege that the Sheikh was arrested on 19 March 2006 in Mecca, during the religious pilgrimage known as Umrah, and state that his family believe the reason for his arrest to be his public comments on government policy. They also note his connection with the so-called "Movement of Reformers" as being a possible reason for his detention. Sanad, another human rights organisation, instead state that he was arrested in 2005 following a sermon protesting Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. In 2007, the OHCHR Working Group on Arbitrary Detention opined that Al Rashid's detention is based solely on his political activities and thus contravenes articles 9 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Al Rashid was originally sentenced to five years in the prison Al-Hair in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but following his appeal in 2009 his sentence was tripled to 15 years. Although his original sentence ended in 2020, his release was delayed and he was instead transferred to the General Directorate of Investigation in November 2021, where he was retried in February 2022 and received an additional sentence of eight years in prison. In November of the same year the Court of Appeals sentenced him to an additional 17 years, for a total of 40 years in prison.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
