Abu Daoud

Mohammad Daoud Oudeh (Arabic: محمد داود عودة), commonly known by his nom de guerre Abu Daoud or Abu Dawud (Arabic: أبو داود) (1937 – 3 July 2010) was a Palestinian militant, teacher and lawyer known as the planner, architect and mastermind of the Munich massacre. He served in a number of commanding functions in Fatah's armed units in Lebanon and Jordan. Oudeh was born in Silwan, East Jerusalem, in 1937. He was a teacher by training. He taught physics and mathematics in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Then he worked at the justice ministry of Kuwait and studied law. He lived in Jerusalem until the 1967 Six-Day War, when he was displaced after Israel captured the eastern portion of the city. He resettled in Jordan, where he joined the PLO.

In 1970, Abu Daoud was one of the founders of Fatah. He received military training from the North Korean military. From 1971 he was leader of the Black September, a Fatah offshoot created to avenge the September 1970 expulsion of the Fedayeen Movement from Jordan and carry out international operations. The group gained international notoriety for its role in the Munich massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, in which a number of athletes on the Israeli team were taken hostage by Black September. Eleven Israeli athletes and a German policeman were killed by the end of the multi-day stand-off. Documents uncovered in 2012 show that logistical help and support were supplied by two German neo-Nazis, Wolfgang Abramowski and Willi Pohl. The connection was made through Udo Albrecht, a neo-Nazi who set up a right-wing German group (Volksbefreiungs-Front Deutschland) and provided assistance to the Palestinians in return for training facilities in Jordan.After the Black September attack, Oudeh lived in Eastern Europe and Lebanon. He resumed his activities with Fatah and the PLO in close collaboration with Abu Iyad and other officials. He led armed units in Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War. In January 1977, Oudeh was intercepted by French police in Paris while travelling from Beirut under an assumed name, and was arrested despite protests from the PLO, Iraq and Libya, who claimed that because Oudeh was travelling to a PLO comrade's funeral he should receive diplomatic immunity. The French government refused a West German extradition request on the grounds that forms had not been filled in properly and put him on a plane to Algeria before Germany could submit another request. Oudeh fled to Eastern Europe, then to Lebanon until the 1975 Lebanese Civil War broke out, then back to Jordan.

On 1 August 1981, Oudeh was shot five times from a distance of around two meters (6') in the coffee shop of the Victoria Inter-Continental Hotel in Warsaw, but he survived the attack, chasing his would-be assassin down to the front entrance of the hotel before collapsing. Oudeh claimed the attempted assassination was carried out by a Palestinian double agent recruited by the Mossad, and claimed the would-be assassin was executed by the PLO ten years later.

After the 1993 Oslo Accords, he moved to Ramallah in the West Bank. Following a trip to Jordan and the publication of his memoirs, Oudeh was banned from returning to Ramallah. He settled with his family in Syria, the only country that would take him. He lived on a pension provided by the Palestinian Authority and gave interviews to Aljazeera and other Arab and international media outlets about his life, the Munich events, and Palestinian politics. Oudeh was allowed safe passage through Israel in 1996, so he could attend a PLO meeting in the Gaza Strip to rescind an article in the PLO charter calling for Israel's eradication.