Killers knelt down.
On 28 November 1971, an organization which was to leave an indelible mark on the history of political terror and the modern Middle East committed its first murder. Four armed Palestinians, operating in broad daylight and without the benefit of masks, shot dead the Jordanian Prime Minister, Wash Tel, as he returned to Cairo’s Sheraton Hotel from an Arab League meeting. The assassination itself was followed by a gruesome ritual as one of the killers knelt down, lapped up and drank some of Tel’s flowing blood and shouted several times that he and his accomplices belonged to Black September. The following month the group tried to assassinate Jordan’s Ambassador to London, Zeid Al Rifai’, a leading politician who had supported King Hussein’s crackdown on the Palestinians. There was no let-up, and in February 1972 members of Black September blew up a West German electrical installation and a Dutch gas plant.