Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

HIJACKING • 255Lebanon. On 3 June 1996 Bahrain announced that it had arrested atotal of 44 Bahrainis, of whom 34 admitted to their connection withHezbollah, and that six suspects leading the group had been trained inIran and had met with the supreme religious leader in Iran, AyatollahAli Khamene’i. The interior minister claimed that the same grouphad been responsible for other disturbances that had broken out inDecember 1994, and Bahrain recalled its ambassador to Tehran.In April 1997 U.S. forces in Bahrain were put on alert when U.S.intelligence discovered a plan by Bahraini Hezbollah members to attackthe U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet Headquarters located outside Manama,which has 1,000 personnel stationed on a 20-acre complex. In additionto restricting these personnel to base, shore leaves to visit Bahrain wouldbe canceled for the approximately 12,000 American service personnelthen on duty in the Persian Gulf. This was the first time in the sevenyears since the 1990–1991 Gulf War that such an alert had been issued.The Bahraini Hezbollah was also suspected to have ties to Shi’ite dissidentsin Saudi Arabia. Since 1997 the group has not been active.3. Hezbollah in the Hijaz: Following the 25 June 1996 KhobarTowers bombing, in their sweep to find the group responsible, Saudiauthorities cracked down on a little-known Shi’ite group in Qatif,known as Hezbollah of Arabia. Between 80 and 100 of its memberswere arrested and investigated. Its leader, Sheikh Jabar al-Mubarak,had been released from a Saudi prison only in 1993. Shi’ite Muslimsnumber slightly more than four million in the oil-rich al-Hasa Provinceof Saudi Arabia, amounting to about 15 percent of the total Saudi population.While Shi’ites are treated as second-class citizens by the stronglySunni government and have many grievances, this group is viewed byobservers as weak and disorganized and probably not capable of havingcarried out the attack on the Khobar Towers residence. Nonetheless, inJanuary 2002, U.S. intelligence sources revealed that Imad Mugniyah,the Lebanese-born head of Lebanese Hezbollah’s intelligence and externaloperations, was in contact with Hezbollah in Arabia throughoutthe 1990s through his deputy, Talal Hamiyah. Mughniyah was consideredthe mastermind of such operations as the October 1983 bombingof the U.S. Marine encampment at Beirut airport, as well as the 1985Trans World Airlines (TWA) Flight 847 hijacking.HIJACKING. Hijacking is the forcible seizure of a ship, train, automobile,or airplane, usually with the threat of bodily harm to the crew and/or passengers. In the 1960s most instances of hijacking involving air