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The Black September Organization (BSO) was a Palestinian paramilitary unit founded in 1970. It is believed to have drawn its members chiefly from Fatah, the PLO faction controlled by Yasser Arafat. In 1973, the U.S. State Department distributed documents regarding the links between the PLO and the BSO.In his book Stateless, Saleh Khalaf (Abu Iyad), who was Arafat's chief of security and a founding member of Fatah, wrote that: "Black September was not a terrorist organization, but was rather an auxiliary unit of the resistance movement, at a time when the latter was unable to fully realize its military and political potential. The members of the organization always denied any ties between their organization and Fatah or the PLO."
The name Black September comes from the conflict known as Black September in Jordan that escalated in September 1970 and resulted in the expulsion of Palestinian refugees and militants from the kingdom.
The group's best-known operation was the " Munich massacre", the kidnapping and killing of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (Abu Daoud), who says he conceived of the Munich attack, stated in his autobiography Memoirs of a Palestinian Terrorist and in a written interview to Sports Illustrated, that "Though he didn't know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack." Abu Mazen is currently the Secretary General of the PLO. The 72-year-old Abu Daoud, who lives with his wife on a pension provided by the Palestinian Authority, has said that, although Yasser Arafat was not involved in conceiving or implementing the attack, "the [Munich] operation had the endorsement of Arafat."
Other actions attributed to the BSO include:
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- December 1971: attempted assassination of Jordan's Ambassador to LondonLondon is the capital of the United Kingdom and of England, and with over seven million inhabitants in the Greater London area, is the second-most populous conurbation in Europe (after Moscow). From being Londinium the capital of the Roman province of Bri and former chief of the Jordanian royal court, Zeid Al Rifai.
- February 1972: sabotage of a West GermanWest Germany was the informal but almost universally used name for the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 until 1990, during which years the Federal Republic did not yet include the eastern part of Germany. Since the German reunification of 1990, the F electrical installation and a DutchDutch redirects here. For other uses, see Dutch (disambiguation). The Netherlands ( Dutch: Nederland is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a constitutional monarchy. It is located in northwestern Europe and borders the North Sea, Belgium gas plant.
- May 1972: hijacking of a BelgianFor alternate meanings, see Belgium (disambiguation). Belgian redirects here. For the horse breed commonly used as a draft horse, see Belgian. The Kingdom of Belgium ( Dutch: Belgi French: Belgique German: Belgien is a country in Western Europe, bordered SabenaSabena was the former national airline of Belgium, now replaced by SN Brussels Airlines. It lasted from 1923 to 2001. The acronym Sabena stood for Societe Anonyme Belge d'Exploitation de la Navigation Aerienne (although English-speaking critics dubbed it airplane flying from Vienna to Tel Aviv.
- March 1, 1973: attack on the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum, killing the American chargé d'affaires J. Curtis Moore, the American ambassador, Cleo Noel, and the Belgian chargé d'affaires, Guy Eid.
After the March 1973 attack, the organization was disbanded, apparently under pressure from the PLO, which believed that terrorist acts were damaging public perception of the Palestinian cause.
After 1974, when the Abu Nidal Organization split from the PLO, the Abu Nidal group started associating the "Black September" name with some of its actions. The PFLP also used the "Black September" name on some occasions. Most likely, these groups had little or nothing to do with the original Black September group.
