In the shadow world of Palestinian factional operations and intelligence wars that defined the 1970s and 1980s, few names were as mysterious or controversial as Marwan Khreesat.
Linked to what became known as the “engineering of airborne death,” Khreesat was described in Western intelligence accounts as a skilled bombmaker for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, or PFLP-GC, led by Ahmed Jibril.
For decades, he remained an elusive figure, moving between world capitals. West Germany arrested him, then released him in circumstances that fueled speculation. Israel’s Mossad pursued him. He eventually died in Amman at about 70, taking many of his secrets with him.
To some, he was a fedayeen who used his electrical skills against the Israeli occupation. To Western investigators, he was linked to aviation attacks that shocked the world.
His death did not end the questions.
Khreesat’s fingerprints, at least in the investigative sense, continued to hover over the Lockerbie case. More recently, his name returned to international attention as a Netflix docudrama revisited the hidden battles, intelligence operations, and unresolved questions of that era.
The electronics expert inside the PFLP-GC
Khreesat’s story began with technical skill.
A talented electrician and technician, he became involved in armed activity early, driven by his nationalist background. As radical Palestinian factions expanded, he joined the PFLP-GC, which had split from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and focused on specialized cross-border military operations.
Ahmed Jibril, born in 1938 in a village in the Jaffa district, founded the faction in 1968 after breaking away from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
He quickly recognized Khreesat’s ability to work with electrical circuits and plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex.
Khreesat was not a front-line fighter.
He worked instead in secret, specially equipped laboratories, designing sophisticated explosive devices triggered by changes in air pressure or by digital timers.
That technical skill turned ordinary objects into devices capable of defeating airport security systems.
From El Al to Operation Autumn Leaves
Khreesat’s expertise did not suddenly emerge in the 1980s. It had been developed years earlier in the laboratories of the region’s shadow wars.
One early episode came in Rome in the summer of 1972.
The PFLP-GC used what the source describes as an emotional deception involving two British women, who were persuaded to carry a household record player presented as a farewell gift before boarding an El Al flight to Tel Aviv.
Hidden inside the record player was a charge of powerful plastic explosives fitted with a barometric trigger.
The device was designed to detonate automatically when the aircraft reached a high altitude over the Mediterranean, sending the wreckage — and potentially the evidence — into the sea.
The bomb exploded about 20 minutes after takeoff, tearing a large hole in the aircraft.
But airport security had insisted the record player be placed in the baggage hold rather than the passenger cabin. That reduced the blast’s impact and allowed the pilot to make a safe emergency landing in Rome.
The incident became an early warning to international intelligence services: an engineer was turning ordinary household electronics into sophisticated airborne bombs.
The most serious threat to Khreesat’s operations came 16 years later.
In the autumn of 1988, West German authorities penetrated a PFLP-GC cell in Frankfurt led by Hafez Dalkamoni as part of what became known as Operation Autumn Leaves.
German police arrested Khreesat and seized explosives concealed inside modified Toshiba radios and cassette players.
The devices were designed to explode automatically once an aircraft reached a specific altitude, triggered by changes in atmospheric pressure.
Then came the mystery.
German authorities released Khreesat only days after his arrest.
The decision triggered years of speculation. Later Western intelligence reports and suspicions suggested he may have been acting as a “double agent,” passing sensitive information to Jordanian, US or other security services.
Lockerbie and the question that would not disappear
On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people.
The technical similarities drew immediate attention.
The bomb used in the attack had also been concealed in a Toshiba cassette player, echoing devices seized from Khreesat in Germany just two months earlier.
Although the international judicial process later convicted Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, Khreesat’s name never fully disappeared from the investigation.
Decades later, it returned to public view through The Bombing of Pan Am 103, a major docudrama produced by the BBC and Netflix.
The series examined the criminal investigation and the joint pursuit by Scottish investigators and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
It also revived the theory of an “Iranian-Palestinian connection.”
Khreesat appeared in that context through references to fragments linked to the bomb and comparisons with devices he had designed that were seized in Germany.
The old question returned with it:
Was Marwan Khreesat the man who actually built the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland?
The secret file left behind
Khreesat spent his final decades largely silent at his home in the suburbs of Amman, refusing repeated approaches from Western media.
In later years, however, he began publishing memoirs and documents online, attacking some Palestinian leaders and at times boasting about earlier operations against Israeli interests.
After his death, the story took another turn.
His daughter, Suha Khreesat, made claims to British media, again pushing his name into the headlines.
In a 2018 interview with Britain’s Daily Mirror, marking the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing, she said her father had played no part in the deaths of the victims.
But she also said he had left behind a “large secret file, documents and recordings” kept by her mother, his wife.
She said the material proved that Ahmed Jibril — who later died in Damascus at about 83 — had carried out the Lockerbie operation under a major direct financial deal with the Iranian government.
Marwan Khreesat died, leaving behind a legacy as murky as the intelligence wars in which he operated.
He was a bombmaker whose technical skills challenged security services across two continents, a figure whose story fused electronics, covert operations, and regional power struggles.
And decades later, his name still shadows the Lockerbie file — preserved in intelligence documents, revived in investigations and retold on screens, revisiting one of the era’s most enduring mysteries.
