The Man Who Holds the Hostages

It is no secret who holds Terry Anderson. Imad Mughniyah is his name. He is a 38-year-old Lebanese leader of the Shi'ite fundamentalist group Hizballah whose history of terrorism is grislier than the record of Palestinian renegade Abu Nidal. Mughniyah's villainy, U.S. officials say, runs from bombings, like the suicide attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut, to hijackings. He is a prime suspect in the U.S. for his alleged role in the 1985 skyjacking of TWA Flight 847 in which a Navy diver was murdered. And he has made a specialty of kidnaping: U.S. officials believe that Mughniyah, under the cloak of cover names like Islamic Jihad and the Revolutionary Justice Organization, has been involved in the kidnaping of at least 31 Westerners since 1984 and that he continues to hold most of the 13 still in captivity.

The kidnapers specifically wanted Terry Anderson. Fatefully, perhaps, the reporter advertised his availability the day before his capture, when he ventured into Beirut's southern suburbs to quiz Hizballah spiritual leader Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. But Anderson's colleagues at the Associated Press believe he may have put himself on Hizballah's blacklist as far back as 1983, when he traveled to their stronghold in Baalbek to grill Shi'ite leaders about the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks.

The grandson of a Shi'ite mullah, Mughniyah trained with Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. A high school dropout, he excelled at terrorism; his boldness and quick grasp of explosives and weaponry impressed his commanders. But he fell out with Fatah leaders and in 1982, when Israeli troops invaded Lebanon and occupied his village, Teir Debbe, Mughniyah joined the newly formed and more radical Hizballah (Party of God). He took to wearing religious garb even as he recruited activists and professionals to the Shi'ite cause. He rose quickly to the top of the organization, and as security chief, Mughniyah is thought to be the group's most powerful figure. He continues to hold the Westerners captive despite public pleas from Fadlallah that they be set free.

His original motivation was to avenge the mistreatment of Shi'ites in Lebanon and to vent his hatred of the U.S. and Israel. But U.S. sources say he has become obsessed with trying to secure the freedom of his brother-in-law Mustafa Badreddin and 16 other Shi'ites jailed in Kuwait after a 1983 bombing blitz. Mughniyah launched his subsequent kidnaping and hijacking spree to spring the 17 in a prisoners-for-hostages swap. Among his victims: William Buckley, the CIA station chief, who died in captivity.

Mughniyah reportedly gets his financing from Tehran, and is considered Iran's man in Lebanon; his closest mentors there include conservative leaders locked in rivalry with Iran's would-be pragmatists. Even so, Mughniyah has been forced to free numerous American, French and West German hostages when it served Iran's interests, while his personal demands have never been met.

Mughniyah seems content to bide his time until the U.S. breaks. But he has not tired of finding ways to press Hizballah's confrontation with the West. Britain's Guardian newspaper reported last month that he was busy organizing mass demonstrations in Lebanon. The cause: demanding Salman Rushdie's death for writing The Satanic Verses.