Imad Mughniyah

Imad Fayez Mughniyeh (Arabic: عماد فايز مغنية; December 7, 1962 – February 12, 2008), Alias al-Hajj Radwan (الحاج رضوان), was a senior member of Lebanon's Islamic Jihad Organization and 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. He has been described as "a sort of 'super chief of staff'" within Hezbollah, who once saw himself as the probable successor to Hassan Nasrallah as the leader of Hezbollah.

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 September 11 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.