On most days, this stadium holds 80,000 eager track and field fans.
Today, instead, they came to a memorial service.
An hour of memory for 11 fellow athletes from Israel,
slain yesterday during an abortive attempt by Palestinian guerrillas
to gain the release of Arabs held prisoner in Israel.
Mossad had almost inconceivable and unthinkable achievements.
The Lillehammer operation was launched,
and this one was an operational failure.
They killed the wrong target.
EXECUTED
At the time, I was in Saint-Tropez.
We played in restaurants.
We made music.
We were in the street. A policeman comes and says to me,
"You should contact your family, because there was a problem at home."
"There was a problem in Norway, a problem with Ahmed."
"But we don't know what's going on." They told us he was dead.
But we thought it was a car accident or some natural cause, unfortunately.
He was assassinated by the secret service, by Mossad.
He was my big brother. He was a bit of a guide for us.
He traveled so much that one day,
he found himself in the Scandinavian countries.
He made his life there. He met his wife, Torill.
He worked in Lillehammer, and he lived in Lillehammer.
He was a karate teacher.
He was a waiter.
He had no ties with the Palestinians at all.
At all.
That's why for us, it was, beyond the tragedy,
a total misunderstanding.
POLICE
It was painful because the more we progressed in the story,
the more we did not understand, because Mossad is a service
that is known throughout the world.
But in the end,
not immune to blunders like that.
Fortunately, some of them have been arrested and convicted.
As a result, it became an incredible state affair.
Almost all the guys on the operation level get some time in prison in Norway.
But within 22 months, they were all out.
Israel never took a formal kind of responsibility for it,
but it was clear between us and the Norwegians that we did it.
Basically, that the Mossad did it.
As a professional, I am still confused today
by this Israeli operation against a Moroccan national
who was a waiter in Lillehammer in Norway, whose only fault
was to have a physical resemblance with Ali Hassan Salameh.
I knew Ali Hassan Salameh a little bit.
It was totally inconceivable that this young and wealthy man,
who drove beautiful cars,
who had an extremely important public life in Beirut,
by some strange twist of fate,
he would have ended up as a waiter near the Arctic Circle, riding his bicycle
and leading a quiet life among the Norwegians.
A lot of operational mistakes were done,
some of them out of the very short timetable,
because the head of the operation was the same Mike Harari,
who ran, personally, many, many dozen,
probably hundreds of different operations very successfully.
But this one failed, basically, and create a mistake and…
injustice to this innocent Moroccan citizen.
So, the incredible thing is that Israel never apologized.
Come on.
You bump into someone in the street, you say sorry.
So, if you kill someone by mistake, where are the apologies? That's huge.
My sister-in-law never got her life back together.
She lived with this tragedy.
They made her sign a paper that she wouldn't talk about that story.
For a very long period of years,
there was not any more terror on the scale we saw before in Europe
against Jews and Israelis.
These activities caused a delay in operations,
caused the leaders of terror to never sleep in the same bed at night,
because they knew that each one of them could be touched personally,
and it disrupted the work.
Abu Hassan, he is one of the leaders of Black September.
I mean, he is one of the leaders, but he was not the senior leader.
I, personally, started in the '60s
as president of the student organization of the Lebanese Kataeb Party.
After that, I was the first member of the Kataeb Party who met Yasser Arafat.
And that started communication and a friendship
between us and Abu Hassan Salameh.
His character is unusual.
Firstly, he was the first person to invent parcel bombs.
He used to send these parcels to members of the Mossad.
Many of them were injured, and I think some ended up dead.
The second thing, which he deeply invested in and worked hard on,
was related to airplanes, hijacking airplanes.
He was able to operate inside Europe with the use of pipelines
by striking the oil lines in Trieste, Italy.
Abu Hassan Salameh settled in Beirut
and established the so-called "External Operations,"
whose mission was to work outside the Arab lands
and primarily in Europe.
Abu Hassan Salameh became the head of the special unit
that was responsible for the protection of Yasser Arafat,
which was called Force 17.
He [Yasser Arafat] would not travel abroad,
I mean, to non-Arab countries,
unless he had Abu Hassan Salameh by his side.
Abu Hassan Salameh became, at this stage,
somehow like Arafat's shadow.
He used to assign him with difficult tasks.
Yasser Arafat assigned him to establish this secret channel with the CIA.
But in 1973, there was a side agreement
between Israel and the United States of America
that every time
the American administration
wanted to contact any Palestinian,
it had to inform Israel in advance.
He talked to me about this for a long time,
and I couldn't find an answer
until a series of kidnappings of Americans in Lebanon,
or attempts to blow up American places.
I noticed this new situation and told him I think
that concerning the idea of the security of the American Embassy
and of every American on Lebanese land,
if you took responsibility for it,
and if we informed the American Embassy
that there is Force 17,
and that Force 17 is at the disposal
of every American who's kidnapped or in danger,
then I believe that the Americans will be affected by it
and will open a secret relationship with you, whether directly or indirectly.
Later on, President Nixon assigned Robert Ames.
He assigned him to establish
a communication channel with the Palestinians.
Robert Ames was the one who told Abu Hassan Salameh in the first meeting,
"Now, you have the opportunity to convey
all your thoughts and demands
to the American administration through this link."
Yasser Arafat and, of course, Abu Hassan Salameh,
both aspired for America to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Abu Hassan Salameh was the one who organized
Yasser Arafat's trip to New York with the CIA.
I come to you bearing an olive branch in one hand
and a freedom fighter's gun in the other.
Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.
News began to arrive in Israel
that there was a series of communications
between Abu Hassan Salameh and the CIA in Beirut.
The principle of forming a communication line between the CIA
and Abu Hassan was absolutely unacceptable.
The Israelis wanted to assassinate Abu Hassan Salameh
for two reasons.
They wanted to break the secret Palestinian-American link.
They believed that this secret link
would sabotage the Israeli-American relations,
and would lead to the American recognition
of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Secondly, the Israelis were killing
all the Palestinian leaders who fell under their control.
Her name was Erika Mary Chambers.
She may have had additional identities or used multiple names,
perhaps a fake name that we are unaware of.
SECTOR 33 SNOUBRA STREET 29 MME CURIE STREET
Abu Hassan's marriage
to Georgina Rizk caused him a problem.
Abu Hassan was able to become a media star, and the journalists…
especially Lebanese journalists,
followed him everywhere.
I personally arrived at a meeting once.
So, I heard Abu Ammar [Yasser Arafat]
with my own ears telling him,
"You should not live with Georgina,
because this is against all security regulations
that you have learned,
and this is extremely dangerous, and it will kill you."
The operation against Ali Hassan Salameh
was greatly facilitated because Ali Hassan Salameh had habits.
So, according to the daily accumulative information
about Abu Hassan Salameh's movements,
the plan was made, which was to place the Volkswagen vehicle
in that location, while it was packed with explosives, of course.
On January 18, 1979,
I attended a meeting with the Kataeb Party
where Bachir Gemayel was present.
When the meeting was over, Bachir asked me,
"Are you still in contact with Abu Hassan?"
"He is our friend."
I answered him, "Yes, I am in contact with him."
He said, "Ask him to take care of himself these days,
and not to make too many moves."
I considered it an important message.
I asked my colleague and friend, who was a friend of Abu Hassan,
to go to Georgina Rizk
to inform Abu Hassan about what I've heard from Bachir.
He did this with his hand and said,
"I receive such news every day, and I am already doing what is necessary."
"And Allah is the protector."
As soon as he turned the corner, we heard a big explosion.
The maid started shouting and saying, "Abu Hassan."
I rushed to the other balcony
and I saw that there was panic in the streets.
I put something on and went downstairs.
Abu Hassan Salameh was wounded and rushed to the hospital.
A friend came to the house
and nodded his head like this.
I understood that he was gone.
I will never forget this day,
because I lost a friend.
My first reaction was, "Really? Did the Israeli assassinate Abu Hassan?"
I mean, that's abnormal.
Of course, my first reaction
was to take the phone and call Yasser Arafat.
And I heard him saying,
"You were his friend, and he loved you."
"Rest in peace, my hero."
Yasser Arafat managed to travel to Beirut with great difficulty.
He attended the funeral of Abu Hassan Salameh
and, of course, carried the coffin, and there were thousands of mourners.
In terms of security, the assassination of Abu Hassan Salameh
came as proof that the Mossad is strong and capable of breaking through
the Lebanese situation and executing a prominent figure.
If the Mossad was capable of killing Abu Hassan Salameh,
it is likely that they can also kill others.
As a result, perhaps several Palestinian leaders
will have to increase their security measures out of fear.
The consequences of Salameh's death
were, above all, the rupture of the links that Salameh
had managed to develop with a certain number of foreign powers
in the Middle East and the West.
The Mossad broke a number of links that could become unfavorable to Israel.
After all, that's its job.
It never ended.
I think that every prime minister between Golda and myself had the same.
It's quite a tough decision
to decide to order your operational guys to kill a person.
These guys are dangerous.
One of them who was involved in the Munich assassination
was killed only in '92,
some 20 years later.
Good evening, you will probably not be surprised
that the news of the day is still marked by violence.
Violence in Paris. A Palestinian leader was shot last night.
Atef Bseiso, the number two in the PLO security services,
was returning from a dinner party when one or two men appeared and fired.
The Palestinian leader died instantly.
It was night, in front of the Meridian Hotel
that Atef Bseiso was shot by one or more individuals,
whose weapon was probably equipped with a silencer and who managed to escape.
This afternoon, Yasser Arafat immediately accused Mossad,
the Israeli secret service, of being behind the attack.
This evening, Israeli and Palestinian sources
confirmed that Atef Bseiso had been one of the organizers
of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games bombing,
which had cost the lives of 11 Israeli athletes.
Atef Bseiso was one of the very high officials of the PLO.
The question remains, who had an interest in assassinating him?
After the assassination of Abu Hassan Salameh,
the security link was cut with the Americans.
This secret channel was cut off
until a public channel was renewed in 1988,
when the US Secretary of State, George Shultz, informed Yasser Arafat
that if he renounces terrorism,
only then will the United States be ready to negotiate with them.
What is incredible in this story
is that 23 years after the assassination,
I received a phone call from UNESCO. "Listen, can you help us?"
"Tonight is the first anniversary of the peace treaty in Oslo."
So, right away, I miraculously managed to find all my musicians and technicians,
and we arrived in Oslo.
And we went on and played in front of this audience,
in front of Shimon Peres and Arafat, who didn't know me.
They didn't know who I was.
And I find myself playing in the country where my brother was assassinated,
playing in front of people who, by their function,
represent what he was assassinated for.
Shimon Peres was Israeli, Arafat is Palestinian.
And… after the concert, Shimon Peres and Arafat came on stage
and shook hands.
And I found that really a sign of fate.
I forgave because forgiveness is what helps us to build,
and especially to rebuild ourselves. Because, frankly, we were really touched.
I was appointed UNESCO's Special Envoy for Peace on May 9, 1996.
And so I went to play in Israel, in Palestine.
I always thought… that we could be a small bridge
over this barrier that they have between them.
And this bridge, I believe, is called forgiveness.