Fathi Shaqaqi

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Fathi Shaqaqi, alternatively spelled Fathi Shqaqi or Fathi Shiqaqi, (1951-1995) was the Palestinian who founded and led the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organisation and the initiator of suicide bombings.

He formed along with Sheik Odeh (aka Abd Al Aziz Awda) the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip during the 1970s, initially as a branch of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Among the Sunni’s, Fathi Shiqaqi was the first individual who published a booklet which legitimized, for the first time the justification of suicide in jihad. He called it sacrifice. Not only the suicide was legitimized but also the operation, he drew the line between prohibited suicide and martyrdom.

He was shot in 1995 in front of the Diplomat Hotel in Sliema,Malta, most probably by two Mossad agents. Shaqaqi, travelling under the false name of Dr Ibrahim Shaweshi, had come to Malta four times since 1993. He was on his way to Tripoli to visit Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi who was promising to help finance Shaqaqi’s factions.

A man walked up to Shaqaqi as he was returning to his hotel and shot him in quick succession with a gun equipped with a silencer and a container to hold the used cartridges. Shaqaqi’s assassins had smuggled a motorcycle into Malta which they used to escape with after shooting the Palestinian leader. Abandoning the motorcycle, a third individual drove them to the Msida Marina from where they most probably boarded a fast boat which took them out at sea and eventually to a large ship from where the whole operation was probably directed. The Maltese police were only able to identify the corpse three days later.

Fathi Shaqaqi's brother Kahlil Shaqaqi is the head of a Palestinian Social Center.

After Shaqaqi's 1995 death, Palestinian Islamic Jihad has been since led by fellow co-founder Sheikh Abdullah Ramadan Shallah, aka Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah, who then joined the earlier listing of fellow PIJ co-founder Abd Al Aziz Awda as a "Specially Designated Terrorist" under United States law on November 27, 1995, and both Shallah and Awda were subsequently indicted on 53 RICO charges, and consequently became two of the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists on February 24, 2006.