Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is orphaned as few or no other articles link to it.
Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (June 2008)

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (June 2008)

Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh (c. 1968-August 3, 1989) was a Muslim Lebanese terrorist, called by some a martyr. He died priming a bomb intended to kill author Salman Rushdie following the publication of The Satanic Verses.

[edit] Biography

Mazeh was born in Conakry, Guinea. A Lebanese citizen, he grew up outside Beirut and joined a local Hezbollah cell while in his teens.

On August 3, 1989, Mazeh was trying to prime a bomb hidden in a book with RDX explosives when it detonated, killing him and taking out two floors of the Beverley House Hotel in Sussex Gardens, Paddington, Central London. A previously unknown Lebanese group, the Organisation of the Mujahidin of Islam, said he died preparing an attack "on the apostate Rushdie".

The Islamic World Movement of Martyrs' Commemoration built a shrine in Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery for him that notes he was "Martyred in London, August 3, 1989. The first martyr to die on a mission to kill Salman Rushdie.".^[1]

James Phillips of the Heritage Foundation testified before the United States Congress that a "March 1989" (sic) explosion in Britain was a Hezbollah attempt to assassinate Rushdie which failed when a bomb exploded prematurely, killing a terrorist in London.^[2]