Guns, explosives and a murdered cartoonist: The day the Middle East conflict triggered a Special Branch raid in Hull
ASSASSINATED: Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali
Now & Then, a column by Angus Young
The inside story of the Ismail Sowan case
It was a textbook operation by Special Branch officers.
Before most nearby residents in Westbourne Avenue were even awake, their prime suspect had been arrested and the contents of two suitcases found in a bathroom cupboard in his flat were safely bagged and tagged.
The haul included semi-automatic machine guns, ammunition, detonators and substantially more explosives than had been used in the IRA attack on the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party conference three years earlier.
The arrest, trial and eventual imprisonment of Ismail Sowan remains one of the most fascinating stories I have ever covered as a journalist, not least because it offered an insight into a seemingly never-ending conflict still in evidence today in Gaza.
Details of Sowan’s address in Hull had been discovered in a diary of a man detained by police in London following the murder of a Palestinian cartoonist.
Naji Al-Ali was shot in the back and neck as he walked to the Kensington offices of a Kuwaiti newspaper where he worked in July 1987. His assassin has never been traced.
Al-Ali’s satirical cartoons cast a critical eye on political issues in the Middle East without ever featuring anyone personally.
Instead, he targeted regimes including the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), Israel, America and neighbouring Arab states, often attempting to reflect ordinary public opinion rather than rival leaders’ political rhetoric.
His most famous cartoon character was Handala, a 10-year-old barefoot boy dressed in ragged clothes and always viewed from the rear with his hands clasped behind his back.
Al-Ali said the inspiration came from his own experience as a boy when his family were forced to flee Palestine during the 1948 mass expulsion led by Israeli paramilitaries, eventually ending up in refugee camp in neighbouring Lebanon.
DRAMA: The leafy west Hull street that was subject to a Special Branch raid
The cartoonist explained Handala’s hands were a symbol of the character’s rejection of “outside solutions” over the fate of the Palestinian people and said he would remain a child until he could return to his homeland.
As such, Handala would appear simply looking on at the actions depicted by the artist as a symbol of quiet Palestinian defiance.
Because he took aim at all sides in his cartoons, Al-Ali attracted enemies and a series of death threats eventually persuaded him to move to the supposed safety of London.
At first, suspicion over his murder fell on the PLO and this was seemingly confirmed when Sowan’s address was found in the diary.
Having previously lived in London, Sowan had moved to Hull to study engineering at what was then Humberside College of Higher Education.
DEFIANCE: Handala, the barefoot child who was Al-Ali’s most famous character
At the college’s city centre campus following his arrest, I interviewed his lecturer who regarded him as a quiet, assiduous student with a keen interest in the subject.
Over a cup of tea in Westbourne Avenue, a couple in the flat across the hallway recalled visits from his English wife who seemed unimpressed with Hull and spoke of trying to persuade her husband to give up his studies and return to London.
A year later I sat in the Old Bailey as this already strange story took another twist.
In court, it emerged that Sowan not only worked for the PLO but had also been recruited by the Israeli secret service Mossad as a double agent to infiltrate a PLO cell known as Force 17 who had been running a petrol station business in London as a cover. He was so successful in the role that he had even ended up as best man at the wedding of the cell’s leader.
Sowan would claim he moved to Hull in an attempt to distance himself from those he had been spying on and to start a new life.
However, the newly-married PLO major from Force 17 drove up to Hull shortly after the shooting of Al-Ali and asked Sowan to look after two locked suitcases he had brought with him. The man left the UK the same day.
LOCATION: The house in Westbourne Avenue where a huge haul of guns and explosives was found
Sowan denied knowing anything about what was inside suitcases but was found guilty of illegally possessing firearms and was jailed for 11 years.
The arsenal of weapons and explosives were said to have been intended for terrorist attacks across Europe, but the involvement of Mossad in the case also triggered speculation that the Israelis might have been behind the cartoonist’s assassination.
Either way, Sowan’s conviction sparked a diplomatic row as it emerged that through its agents infiltrating the PLO’s operation in London, Mossad not only knew about the hidden guns and explosives in Hull but had also been paying the rent on Sowan’s flat.
During questioning, Sowan also implied that Mossad knew about the PLO hit team’s plan to murder Al-Aji but deliberately kept the information from their British counterparts at MI5.
This serious breach of intelligence service etiquette was reportedly described as “intolerable” by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Within a few days, Sowan’s London-based Mossad handler was packing his bags.
His expulsion was subject of a report by the Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe to a cabinet meeting held in Downing Street in June 1988.
Recording the sentencing of Sowan and the connection to the fatal shooting, the minutes of the meeting say: “The case had revealed a mixed pattern of unacceptable activity by both the Palestinian organisation, Force 17, and Israel.
“A Force 17 officer in the Palestinian Liberation Organisation has been requested to leave the United Kingdom and an Israeli diplomat who was an identified but undeclared member of the Israeli intelligence organisation Mossad has also been expelled.
“The Israelis had been reminded that British guidelines for intelligence cooperation precluded undeclared Mossad operations in or based in the United Kingdom.
“The Israeli reaction has been muted; indeed they had reportedly expected a more severe penalty. Nor had there been any undue excitement on the parts of Arab governments about the action against the PLO.
“All Force 17 members identified in Britain have now been excluded from this country. The Government was pursuing with other European partners the question of Force 17’s capability for terrorist action in Europe.”
Four decades on from Al-Aji’s unsolved murder and the Sowan case, peace between Israel and the Palestinians seems as far away as ever while the instantly-recognisable figure of Handala continues to look on from banners and walls.
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