Erika Chambers

Erika Chambers is the assumed psydonum of the Mossad agent behind the action on January 22, 1979 which killed Ali Hassan Salameh of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

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A British Jew Erika Mary Chambers, known in the "Mossad" headquarters as an agent Penelope, put the end to this story.

Death

Salameh was killed on January 22, 1979 in Beirut by a car bomb planted by Israeli security forces as part of the Operation Wrath of God campaign, in response to the Munich massacre in 1972. Eight other people were also killed in the explosion.

It is believed that Mossad recruited Erika Chambers, a British citizen, to carry out Salameh's assassination. She traveled to the Middle East with a charity supporting Palestinian refugees and arranged a meeting with Salameh in Beirut, where Salameh was being harbored by the Lebanese government. Chambers learned Salameh's daily routine and arranged for a car bomb to be planted on a street which Salameh used. As his convoy drove past, Chambers activated the explosive, killing him and four of his bodyguards. Four bystanders were also killed.

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Salameh didn't act like a man on the run. He married Miss Universe, then spent his honeymoon in Hawaii and Disney World. But Wyman understood the Red Prince’s days might be numbered. He knew the Israelis have long memories.

"Had you asked me at the time I would have said it's only a matter of time before they try to get him," says Wyman, who believes that Salameh knew that he was a target.

The Red Prince was living the good life in Lebanon. Beirut was a cosmopolitan city, so no one found it strange when an eccentric Englishwoman named Erika Chambers rented an apartment around the corner from his place and spent hours at her window painting street scenes. On Jan. 22, 1979, the Red Prince was on his way to his mother's for a birthday party. As he drove past a Volkswagen parked on the street, Miss Chambers gave a signal from her terrace. The Red Prince never made it to the party.

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BBC names Chambers

January 24, 2006

• BBC will tonight name Erika Chambers as the British woman who in 1979 detonated the bomb in Beirut that killed the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre

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In a long and complicated operation, Mossad recruited Erika Chambers, a British citizen.

She joined welfare organisations supporting Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and was invited to Beirut.

It was there that she engineered a meeting with Salameh.

She soon learned his daily routine, including the route he drove from his house to work.

Mossad rented an apartment overlooking this route and the plan to assassinate him was laid.

Mossad operative T remembers: "We were given explosives and someone had to mount them in her car. I did it."

Erika's car was parked on the side of the road beneath the apartment.

She had been trained to press a remote control and activate the explosion when she saw Salameh's convoy driving past her car.

The blast killed Salameh and eight other people.

This was the last Bayonet operation.

Between 1972 and 1979 more than a dozen Palestinians were assassinated, ensuring the total eradication of Black September.

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Early in 1979, the Israelis finally caught up with Salameh. He was killed on January 29, when a covert Mossad team led by a woman using the alias Mary Erika Chambers detonated a Volkswagen packed with 100 kilograms of explosives as Salameh's motorcade turned out of Beirut's Rue Verdun onto Rue Madam Curie.

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Wilhelm Dietl, German journalist agent for the Bundesnachrichtendienst, wrote a book about an agent named "Erika Chambers" and also devoted a chapter to her in another book. "Her character fascinated me," he says. "I was in Beirut and met PLO people, and they always talked about the operation she took part in. Chambers was the Mossad agent who in 1979 killed Ali Hassan Salameh, who was one of [Yasser] Arafat's assistants - a Palestinian playboy and the operations officer of [the militant Palestinian organization] Black September. He was one of the planners of the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. She pressed the button of the remote control that set off the bomb, which had been placed along the route Salameh was driving."

According to Dietl, Chambers was a British citizen who studied hydrology in Australia, arrived at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at the age of 20 or 21 to continue her studies, was recruited by the Mossad and became one of the organization's stars. "The investigation carried out by the PLO found that she had left behind her a trail of addresses in Geneva and Germany, and therefore thought she had done so deliberately so the PLO would believe, mistakenly, that the action was perpetrated by the BND, or that the BND was an accomplice to it, in revenge for Munich."

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Interesting ref in Google Books.