Palestinian fighter from Shatila refugee camp dies after 38 years in Austrian prison

By Dieter Reinisch

On Friday, September 13, 2024, Tawfiq Chaovali, alias Imad Omran, a Palestinian resistance figure, passed away in Stein prison in Krems, Austria, after almost 40 years of incarceration.

Chaovali joined the Palestinian resistance at a young age and was actively involved in the fight against the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982 as a Palestinian refugee in the country.

Following the infamous Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut in September 1982, he participated in a retaliatory operation targeting the Israeli airline El Al at Vienna-Schwechat Airport in 1985.

Born in 1960, Chaovali grew up in the Shatila refugee camp, established in southern Lebanon in 1949 for Palestinian refugees. At the young age of 26, in 1975, he joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). 

His father was killed in an Israeli air raid near Sidon, a city in southern Lebanon. 

In the summer of 1982, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Chaovali fled to Tunisia. However, he returned to Lebanon a year later. Upon his return, he joined the Abu Nidal Organization, a Fatah-affiliated resistance group, to fight against the Israeli regime.

In late 1985, Chaovali traveled to Austria via Hungary. Just days after his arrival, on December 27, 1985, an operation was carried out at Vienna-Schwechat Airport, which coincided with a similar operation at Rome's Fiumicino Airport.

At around 9:00 AM, three attackers stormed a section of the departure hall at the Vienna airport, throwing a smoke grenade and three hand grenades toward the check-in counter for El Al and opening fire with machine guns. 

Four people, including one of the attackers, were immediately killed, and 45 others were injured, 18 of them critically. Two victims were en route to Tel Aviv to permanently settle in the occupied territories.

Some reports claimed that passengers on board included Israeli military pilots involved in the Lebanon invasion. This claim, however, was later refuted by the PLO.

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The Abu Nidal group fighters had entered Austria using Tunisian passports obtained in Libya. Two of the attackers were wounded and captured after a lengthy car chase, while Abdel Aziz Merzoughi, one of the gunmen, died after their vehicle was stopped on a road near the Slovak capital, Bratislava.

Chaovali and Mongi Ben Saadaoui, the other two attackers, were subsequently arrested by Austrian police with severe injuries.

Initially, both men refused to provide statements. “They had no ID cards. When asked if they were Palestinians, they answered, ‘I speak English,’” reported the Austrian newspaper Die Presse on December 28, 1985.

It later emerged that both of them were Palestinian refugees from the Sabra and Shatila camps, and Chaovali had witnessed the horrible massacre firsthand. 

They had been trained for the mission in Lebanon and had met with the Rome attackers in Switzerland. The Abu Nidal Group, also known as the Fatah Revolutionary Council, claimed responsibility for the attacks in Vienna and Rome as retaliation for the massacres committed by Israeli forces and their allies in Lebanon.

Notably, the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, carried out on September 16, 1982, by the Israeli occupation and the Phalangist militia, resulted in the rape, torture, and murder of between 2,000 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians.

Chaovali and his comrades sought revenge for these atrocities, as well as for numerous other massacres carried out by Israeli forces and their proxies in Lebanon.

One of the attackers who survived the Rome assault had also lost his father in the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

On the evening of December 27, 1985, an anonymous caller contacted a Spanish radio station, claiming that the Abu Nidal Organization, or Fatah Revolutionary Council, was responsible for the attacks in Vienna and Rome. The group later officially claimed responsibility under the name "Cells of the Arab Fedayeen."

This was not the first attack carried out by the Abu Nidal group in Vienna. On May 1, 1981, Heinz Nittal, head of the Austria-Israel Friendship Society, a Zionist lobby group, was killed in a similar operation.

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Founded by Abu Nidal in 1974 after his split from the PLO, the Abu Nidal Organization operated out of training camps in Lebanon and Libya. British journalist Patrick Seale, in his book about Abu Nidal, recounts an incident in Vienna in 1988, where he met a woman who had survived the airport attack:

“I attended a party hosted by the Friends of Palestine and was struck by a woman who spoke passionately about the Palestinian cause. A former Austrian foreign minister, who was also present, told me that she had been a passenger at Vienna airport during the attack," he stated. 

"A grenade had landed at her feet but failed to explode. Despite this, she remained a fervent supporter of the Palestinians, saying, ‘They do these things out of despair. I support them even more now.’”

In 1987, Chaovali and Ben Saadaoui were sentenced to life imprisonment in Austria. Ben Saadaoui was released in 2008 after serving 22 years and was banned from re-entering Austria for ten years.

Chaovali, meanwhile, received an additional 19-year sentence for attempting to escape in 1995 and his involvement in a hostage-taking incident at Graz-Karlau prison in 1996.

Abu Nidal himself died under mysterious circumstances in Baghdad in 2002, with some reports suggesting he was killed by West-backed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s secret service.

After 38 years in Austrian prisons, Chaovali passed away at the age of 64 in Stein prison, Lower Austria, on the morning of Friday, September 13, 2024. 

His friends and supporters told Press TV that Chaovali was known for his courage and steadfast commitment to the Palestinian cause. He died without ever giving up his claim for the freedom and liberation of Palestine from the Israeli occupation. 

Dieter Reinisch is a Press TV correspondent based in Vienna, Austria.

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