The unit had originally been created as Yasser Arafat’s personal security force. Its name came from the number of Arafat’s telephone extension in the old PLO headquarters in Beirut. At one stage in Lebanon, Force 17 had grown to a ragtag army of over a thousand fighters; one of its units had been the notorious Black September group that had carried out the massacre of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Shortly before the PLO was forced to leave Lebanon and resettle in Tunis, Force 17’s original commander, Ali Hassan Salameh, was killed by the car bomb arranged by Rafi Eitan. In Tunis, Arafat had faced hard realities. He was not only hunted by Mossad, but had become increasingly threatened by other Arab extremists. Abu Nidal, who claimed he was the authentic voice of the armed struggle, said there could be no victory until Arafat was eliminated. Arafat’s response had been to restructure Force 17 into a close-knit unit with a dual purpose: to continue to protect him, and to launch well-prepared attacks against its enemies, beginning with Israel. Mustapha was given command of Force 17. In Tunis, his men were trained by both Chinese and Russian Special Forces in guerrilla warfare. In 1983, Mustapha began to travel to Britain to recruit mercenaries.
London was awash with former SAS men and regular army veterans who had seen service in Northern Ireland and were looking for a new outlet for their killing skills. The pay as PLO instructors was good and many of the mercenaries had a strong anti-Semitic attitude. A number signed on and traveled to Tunisia to work in PLO training camps. Other instructors were drawn from the ranks of former French foreign legionnaires and, at one stage, even included a former CIA officer, Frank Terpil, who would later become briefly involved with Mehmet Ali Agca, the fanatic who shot Pope John Paul II.
For a whole year Mustapha had slipped in and out of Britain without MI5 or the Special Branch even realizing who he was. When Mossad informed them, the only action taken was for an MI5 officer to remind the PLO office in London it would be closed and its staff expelled at the first hint they were engaged in terrorist activity against Britain. But they could continue to fulminate against Israel.
An intriguing sidelight to the propaganda war came when Bassam Abu-Sharif, then Arafat’s chief media spokesman, was invited to meet novelist Jeffrey Archer. The PLO man would remember that Archer had explained “how we should develop and manage our media relations, how to organize our political activity, how to set about building contacts with British politicians and mobilize public opinion. I am extremely impressed.”
That meeting ensured that Archer’s name found its way onto Mossad’s computers.
To the furious Israelis it appeared Mustapha was under the protection of the British authorities and that any attempt to deal with him in Britain could have repercussions for Mossad.
Ismail Sowan’s task was to try to lead Mustapha into a trap outside the country, preferably in the Middle East, where waiting Mossad kidons could execute him. Sowan had been told by Adam in Paris he would work under the guidance of his Mossad controllers based at the Israeli embassy in London. The first was Arie Regev. The other was Jacob Barad, who looked after Israel’s commercial interests. A third London-based
A few days after arriving in London, Sowan set up his first contact with Samara. The couple met beneath the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus. Each carried a copy of the
Many of those who worked there wanted to be on the cutting edge of the action, such as carrying messages to various PLO cells around Europe, flying to the Organization’s Tunis headquarters with particularly important information, and afterward waiting for hours for the chance just to glimpse Arafat. These young, committed revolutionaries had no interest in routine office work, clerking or filing, reading the newspapers, manning the phones. When Sowan volunteered for this work, he was promptly taken on at the London office.
