1. Samir Kuntar was a Lebanese Druze member of the Palestine Liberation Front.
32 Facts About Samir Kuntar
1. 2.
Samir Kuntar was born to a Druze family in Lebanon and joined Palestinian militants in Lebanon at a young age.
3.
Israeli authorities argued that the Samir Kuntar had murdered the two Israeli civilians.
4.
Samir Kuntar maintained they had been killed by Israeli forces as they shot at him and the PLF militants.
5.
Israel's refusal to release Samir Kuntar was cited as the justification for the 2006 Hezbollah cross-border raid, which lead to the 2006 Lebanon War.
6.
Samir Kuntar continued to be celebrated, receiving Syria's highest medal, and later being honored by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
7.
On 19 December 2015, Samir Kuntar was killed by an explosion in the outskirts of Damascus.
8.
Samir Kuntar's parents divorced soon after his birth and his mother died when he was a boy.
9.
Samir Kuntar dropped out of school at 14 and underwent training in the camps of various Palestinian militant groups and became a member of the Palestine Liberation Front.
10.
Samir Kuntar was motivated by anti-Zionism and his vision was to liberate Arab territories from Israeli occupation.
11.
Samir Kuntar's goal was to take part in an attack on Israel.
12.
Samir Kuntar was held for 11 months in a Jordanian prison and was released in December 1978.
13.
Samir Kuntar was banned from entering Jordan for three years.
14.
On 22 April 1979, aged 16, Samir Kuntar led a group of four PLF militants who entered Israel from Lebanon by boat.
15.
When Danny refused to let go of his daughter Einat, Samir Kuntar says he grabbed them both and hurriedly took them to the boat.
16.
Samir Kuntar's group took Danny and Einat down to the beach, where a shoot-out with Israeli policemen and soldiers erupted.
17.
Samir Kuntar's defense claimed that he had been beaten in the detention center.
18.
Samir Kuntar explained that the group's goal had been to take hostages back to Lebanon, and that he had taken the 4-year-old to prevent Israeli police from shooting at them.
19.
Samir Kuntar claimed to have no knowledge of the fate of the girl.
20.
An anonymous witness for the prosecution confirmed that Haran had shouted to the soldiers "Cease your fire, don't shoot, my little girl is here," but that Samir Kuntar then shot him in the back.
21.
At his trial, and consistently thereafter, Samir Kuntar denied killing the 4-year-old or her father.
22.
Samir Kuntar told his detailed version of the events to Maariv correspondent Chen Kotes-Bar.
23.
Samir Kuntar told me he didn't do it and I believe him.
24.
Samir Kuntar was allowed conjugal visits with his wife while in prison.
25.
On 26 May 2008, Israeli sources announced that Samir Kuntar was among those who would be exchanged for the bodies of two reservists, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, captured by Hezbollah in the cross-border raid that sparked the 2006 Lebanon War.
26.
On 17 July 2008, Samir Kuntar visited the tomb of Imad Mughniyeh.
27.
Samir Kuntar was on the list of individuals banned from entering the United Kingdom.
28.
Syrian government sources stated that Samir Kuntar had played an important role in the Syrian part of the Golan Heights by Hezbollah, with a special emphasis on Druze villages.
29.
Samir Kuntar is accused of being behind the attack on a Magen David Adom ambulance by Israeli Druze who claimed it was transporting Syrians to Israel for health care.
30.
In July 2015, it was claimed that Samir Kuntar was targeted and possibly killed in an alleged Israeli drone strike upon his automobile in the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights town of Hader, along with members of Hezbollah and the Syrian National Defence Forces.
31.
On 19 December 2015, in the midst of the Syrian Civil War, Samir Kuntar was killed by an explosion destroying a six-story residential building in Jaramana on the outskirts of Damascus.
32.
However, Free Syrian Army's responsibility is considered unlikely since Samir Kuntar was killed in precision executed strike which destroyed only part of a building without further collateral damage which would clearly exceed the Free Syrian Army's capability although they certainly had a motive due to Samir Kuntar's cooperation with Assad.