Face to face with bomber mastermind

By DONALD MACINTYRE

He sat in the middle of the room, a few metres from the Shin Bet interrogator he had got to know so well since his arrest a month ago.

With his well-kept beard and dressed in a beige zip-up jacket over a white T-shirt and dark trousers, his feet sockless under brown lace-up shoes without laces, Abdul Rahman Makdad looked relaxed, even a little truculent.

As he began to speak, in an unhesitant voice, it required effort, here in the heart of the Russian Compound prison, to conjure the full enormity of the mission he was describing in such matter-of-fact terms.

On Saturday, February 21, he had sent his wife and infant son away to his parents-in-law, leaving him free to concentrate on the work ahead.

At 4pm Mohammed Za'ul, at 23 five years younger than Makdad, arrived at Makdad's home in Bethlehem so the older man could give the younger one final instructions and spend the night meticulously preparing the explosives before packing them into the blue rucksack Za'ul would be wearing when he boarded the number 14 bus in Jewish West Jerusalem the following morning.

Neither man had slept that night; Makdad took the customary video of Za'ul's last testament as a man who had volunteered for martyrdom.

Makdad saw to it that Za'ul was wearing clothes suitable for the Jerusalem weather that morning - jeans, jacket and a nondescript hat.

The object, he explained, was to make Za'ul as unobtrusive - and as Jewish-looking - as possible.

"In general he wasn't frightened," said Makdad. "But I told him not to look at any police and security people and not to be frightened."

Za'ul did not speak any Hebrew; so he had been under a standing instruction to detonate the bomb if he was spoken to by the bus driver.

"But this is a rare situation."

Although religious only "in a general way, not an extreme one", Makdad had joined Za'ul in his last prayers.

The two men ate breakfast together before Za'ul left at 6am, to be guided by a construction worker carefully chosen for his local knowledge through the security cordon dividing Bethlehem from Jerusalem and on to the centre of the city.

It was after 8.30am that Makdad got the news that the bomb had detonated as a bus headed north along King David St in rush hour, killing eight Israeli civilians and wounding more than 60.

"I heard it on the radio," he said. "And I was happy."

If Makdad had somehow been broken by his interrogation he showed no sign of it.

Asked in this rare hour-long interview if he accepted the principal Israeli accusation that he had organised the February bomb on the number 14 bus and the one just a month earlier which had killed 11 people on a number 19 Jerusalem bus, he answered coolly: "I was responsible for the last two operations. I don't recall the numbers of the buses."

He showed impatience - turning to his unnamed Shin Bet interrogator, an Arabic speaker in his 30s dressed in jeans and a check shirt, to enjoy a joke with him at the expense of the sheer "Westernness" of our questions - when he was asked repeatedly exactly how the two men had spent the last 14 hours before Za'ul left on his mission.

What had they eaten for breakfast? Did it matter? Maybe a little humus; he couldn't really remember. Why were we so obsessed with food? Were we hungry?

Makdad said his journey to the leadership of a cell of four men - part of a larger, interlocking, 20-strong Bethlehem-based cell, according to the Israelis - had been a long one.

He was born in Egypt. His family had fled there as refugees after 1948 from near Ashkelon.

Makdad lived there until he was 14, moving on to Libya, where he joined Fatah's Palestinian Liberation Army and took a commando course.

But with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the wake of the Oslo accords he came to Gaza and then to Jenin, where he served in the Palestinian Security Services.

At this point, he said: "I believed in peace. I served with the police force."

But then, as he put it: "I noticed that Israel didn't want peace."

The manifestations of the occupation remained in place - including what Makdad described as "Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people".

He was transferred to Bethlehem, where he became a bodyguard to the Palestinian Authority governor Mohammed Madami, and then to the man who took over the governate from Madami five months ago, Zuhair Manasra.

He was in that job until he was arrested; indeed, as Makdad confirmed, his family continue to receive his salary now he is in detention. To Makdad this is entirely natural, despite the authority's stated opposition to suicide bombings.

"They treat me as a political prisoner, not as a criminal. If I had been found out as a collaborator, they would have stopped my salary."

The Israeli charge sheet against Makdad is lengthy, going back to shooting attacks in 2001.

As late as last month, just a week after dispatching the second bus bomber to Jerusalem, Makdad planned a spectacular but foiled hijacking of an Israeli bus, say his accusers.

Two suicide bombers would have driven the bus to Bethlehem and forced it and its passengers into the Church of the Nativity to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners in return for the passengers' lives. If anything had gone wrong, the bombers would have blown up the bus.

So why had he agreed to talk to reporters from European and American newspapers, invited to the Russian Compound by his Israeli enemies?

"The main purpose of this meeting is to give a clear picture of our strategy, which is reacting to killing by killing."

He used this last phrase several times, justifying the killing of innocent civilians as a response to the deaths caused by Israel's targeted assassinations and incursions into the occupied territories.

Makdad said: "We prefer to do the explosions in a bus. Sometimes it has to be in Jerusalem, in a crowded area. But the main thing is to create more casualties."

What had the tactic, internationally reviled as it was, achieved for the Palestinian cause?

If the Israelis continued to kill Palestinians, this would eventually help to achieve the Palestinian goals "in the long term and in the future".

Awaiting what is likely to be a life sentence, an unrepentant Makdad insisted he "had no regrets. I have done nothing wrong".

Two more questions. Why, if he was a strong believer in martyrdom, had he not carried out the bombings himself?

If he went on such a mission, he would no longer be able to organise others to do so. But he had been ready to do the February bombing himself if it had been necessary.

And was his career of organising attacks on Israelis over? Well, prisoner swaps are a feature of the conflict.

"No, I don't think it is over."

- INDEPENDENT