Black September Organization (BSO) was a Palestinian paramilitary group founded in 1970. A radical splinter group of the PLO, it drew members from Fatah and the PFLP. In 1973, the U.S. State Department distributed documents regarding the links between the PLO and the BSO.
The name Black September comes from the conflict known as Black September in Jordan that escalated in September 1970 and ended up with the expulsion of Palestinian refugees and militants from the kingdom.
The group's most well-known operation was the "Munich massacre", the kidnapping and killing of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (Abu Daoud), the militant who claims to have conceived of the Munich attack, stated in his autobiography Memoirs of a Palestinian Terrorist and in a written interview to Sports Illustrated, that "Though he didn't know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack." Abu Mazen is currently the Secretary General of the PLO. The 72-year-old Abu Daoud, who lives with his wife on a pension provided by the Palestinian Authority, claims that although Yasser Arafat was not involved in conceiving or implementing the attack, he (Abu Daoud) believes that "the [Munich] operation had the endorsement of Arafat."
Other actions attributed to the BSO include:
- November 28, 1971: the assassination of Jordan's Prime Minister, Wasfi Tel, "in retaliation" for his leadership in expelling Palestinans from Jordan in 1970-71.
- December 1971: attempted assassination of Jordan's Ambassador to London and former chief of the Jordanian royal court, Zeid Al Rifai.
- February 1972: sabotage of a West German electrical installation and a Dutch gas plant.
- May 1972: hijacking of a Belgian Sabena airplane flying from Vienna to Tel Aviv.
- March 1, 1973: attack on the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum, killing the American chargé d'affaires J. Curtis Moore, the American ambassador, Cleo Noel, and the Belgian chargé d'affaires, Guy Eid.
After the March 1973 attack, the organization was disbanded, apparently under pressure from the PLO, which believed that terrorist acts were damaging public perception of the Palestinian cause.
After 1974, when the Abu Nidal Organization split from the PLO, the Abu Nidal group started associating the "Black September" name with some of its actions. The PFLP also used the "Black September" name on some occasions. Most likely, these groups had little or nothing to do with the original Black September group.