It is about January 1978. Wadi Hadad in Baghdad started having severe stomach cramps after a regular meal. Hadad was the head of the Palestinian organization, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was not feeling hungry. His weight had decreased by more than 25 pounds. After this he was taken to the Iraqi government hospital. The doctors there treated him for hepatitis. Hard potency antibiotics were given. Hadad was treated by the best doctors of Baghdad. But there was no improvement in his condition. Soon, his hair started falling. His fever was not decreasing.
Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, asked an associate to seek help from the Stasi, East Germany’s secret service. This was the time when the Soviet Union helped Palestinian fighters and provided them passports, shelter, weapons and intelligence.
When Arafat’s aide contacted the East German secret service, or Stasi, Haddad was flown from Baghdad to East Berlin. He was admitted to a hospital that treats members of the intelligence and secret-service community. This was March 19, 1978. By now Hadad had spent two very painful months in a hospital in Baghdad. When East Berlin intervened, Arafat expected the results to be somewhat clearer. Hadad was admitted to the Regierungskrankenhaus. Haddad’s aides packed a bag of toiletries as he was airlifted from Baghdad. There was also a tube of toothpaste in it. By the time Hadad reached Berlin, he had become ‘the walking dead’.
Forty-one-year-old Hadad was admitted to a hospital in East Berlin. Blood was coming out from many places on his body. Blood was leaking from the pericardium around his heart. There was blood in the root of his tongue, tonsils and urine. Platelets had fallen a lot.
Hadad remained in great pain for ten days. Her screams could be heard throughout the hospital in East Berlin and doctors had to keep her unconscious all day and night. Then on March 29, Hadad died. Then post mortem had to be done. The report said Haddad died of ‘cerebral hemorrhage and pneumonia secondary to panmyelopathy’, and it was suspected that he had been murdered.
What happened to Wadi Hadad after all?
Wadi Hadad and PFLP chief Abu Hani masterminded the Entebbe hijacking of Air France Flight 139 on June 27, 1976. This flight had left for Paris from Tel Aviv via Athens. 58 passengers boarded the plane in Athens. There were four kidnappers among them.
On Haddad’s instructions, two PFLP terrorists worked together with two Germans from a German revolutionary cell. The plane was diverted to Benghazi, Libya, where the hijackers had to release Patricia Martel, a British-born Israeli citizen, who pretended to have an abortion by cutting herself. After Martel came out, she went to London and was interrogated by the British intelligence agency MI6 and the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. The plane had to be grounded for seven hours in Benghazi to refuel. After that he left for Entebbe Airport in Uganda. To a large extent, Israel carried out Operation Thunderbolt in Entebbe. A 29-man unit of Sayeret Matkal (the special reconnaissance unit of the Israeli General Staff) led by Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu was successful in evacuating the hostages. However, it had to pay a price. Israel lost Lieutenant Colonel Netanyahu in the Entebbe raid, and the operation was later renamed ‘Operation Jonathan’. Mossad did not take this lightly.
Wadi Hadad joined the Mossad hit list. Mossad started working to eliminate Hadad. It had been eighteen months since the Entebbe raid. Meanwhile, Hadad was living peacefully in Baghdad, Iraq and Beirut, Lebanon.
Mossad did not want hanging in the Arab capital. Therefore, he found a way to reduce suspicion. This had to be shown that the plaintiff Hadad had died due to illness. The risk of capture after a failed operation in the Arab capital was too high. The Israelis did not want this.
agent of death
The task of killing Hadad was assigned to ‘Agent Sadness’. Agent Sadness had access to both Hadad’s home and office. On January 10, 1978, 1.5 years after the Entebbe raid, Haddad’s daily toothpaste was replaced with a death tube. The tube of toothpaste contained a poison developed at the Israel Institute for Biological Research in Ness Ziona, southeast of Tel Aviv. The institute developed a poison that could cross the mucous membrane in Hadad’s mouth. And every time he used toothpaste, it started getting incorporated into the blood. Gradually it reached a very fatal level and Hadad died.