Man remembers ‘hatred' in terrorist killed in car bombing

Local developer Kurt Carlson remembers Imad Fayez Mughniyeh, the mastermind behind the June 14, 1985, hijacking of TWA Flight 847, on which Carlson was a passenger.

Carlson met Mughniyeh while being held in a jail cell in Lebanon.

"He was bad. You could just feel the hatred in him. His voice just kept rising. He was almost screaming at us," Carlson said Wednesday.

Mughniyeh was killed late Tuesday night in a car bombing in Syria, news that shocked Carlson.

"I couldn't believe it when I heard it. He's been so well protected or hidden over the years that he was hardly ever seen," he said.

TWA Flight 847 was on its way from Athens to Rome when it was hijacked by Shiite Muslims sympathetic to the Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's leader at the time. Carlson, then an Army Reserve major on active duty, was returning to the U.S. after a training mission in Egypt.

His flight was commandeered by two German-speaking Lebanese men who smuggled pistols and grenades through Athens airport security. When the plane landed in Beirut, Navy diver Robert Stethem was shot and killed, his body dumped on the tarmac.

Carlson and five Navy divers were held captive for 17 days in Beirut, Lebanon. They were beaten and subjected to mock executions by Hezbollah terrorists.

Nearly 23 years later, Carlson vividly recalls being held captive in a Beirut jail cell, a terrorist holding a gun to his head and cocking it.

"The physical stuff was a whole lot easier to deal with than the mental stuff," he said.

Dan Gilbert, a local attorney who teaches a counterterrorism class to Wisconsin State Police troopers at Ft. McCoy, Wis., represented Carlson and the Navy divers in a lawsuit filed against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which financially supported the hijacking. The jury awarded the men $309 million.

In a printed statement, Gilbert said:

"Since the early '80s, Mughniyeh has been behind several terrorist attacks, as well as being suspected of the terrorist acts against our country on September 11, 2001. It is gratifying that there can be some further closure for those such as Kurt who bravely suffered at the hands of Mughniyeh and terrorists responsible for the hijacking of TWA Flight 847."

Since his return, Carlson has developed such projects as the Loves Park public ice arena that bears his name, the Windsor Lakes office park and the Rockford RiverHawks baseball stadium.

He also wrote a book about his experience: "One American Must Die: A Hostage's Personal Account of the Hijacking of Flight 847."

Staff writer Chris Green be reached at 815-987-1241 or cgreen@rrstar.com .