Marwan Khreesat

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Marwan Khreesat double/triple agent and PFLP-GC bomb-maker

Marwan Abd Rezak Mufti Khreesat of Jordanian nationality is a terrorist bomb-maker who was active with Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) in the early 1970s and again in the mid-late 1980s. Marwan Khreesat's speciality was the altimeter bomb - designed to kill airliners. The IED would be hidden inside electronics such as a radio/cassette player, packed in a suitcase and only detonate after reaching a certain altitude.

By 1988 at the latest, Marwan Khreesat was also working for Jordanian intelligence, General Intelligence Directorate (GID), making him a double agent when he was called back into Ahmed Jibril's fold in the autumn of 1988. To help Iran avenge the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 on 3 July 1988, a PFLP-GC cell was formed in Neuss/Frankfurt, West Germany, centered around helping Khreesat build more altimeter bombs. His GID bosses instructed him to infiltrate the group and not to arm any of his bombs. Instead, four armed bombs were intercepted in the October 1988 operation 'Autumn Leaves' raid by West German police, with a fifth IED disappearing just six weeks before the Lockerbie bombing of 21 December 1988.

Marwan Khreesat was among those arrested by the German police but was quickly released and in November 1988 fled back to Jordan where he remained. He was at first a Lockerbie suspect but then he was found to be a CIA informer, who gave clues to the FBI in two November 1989 interviews. Suspicion then moved towards Libya and away from the PFLP-GC.[1]


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