Was Hezbollah's Mughniyeh an unintended target?

A security source from Beirut tells Al-Monitor how the perpetrators of the 2008 assassination of Hezbollah's military commander might not have known they were targeting the elusive Imad Mughniyeh.
A woman supporter of the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement holds onto an image of the movement's slain commander Imad Mughniyeh during a Hezbollah parade in the city of Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon on December 19, 2010, to mark the 13th day of Muharram-Ashura, where believers mourn the killing of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, Imam Hussein, in the seventh century, during the battle of Karbala in central Iraq. AFP PHOTO/MAHMOUD ZAYYAT (Photo credit should read MAHMOUD ZAYAT/AFP/Getty Images)
A supporter of the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement holds onto an image of the movement's slain commander Imad Mughniyeh during a Hezbollah parade in the city of Nabatiyeh, in southern Lebanon, Dec. 19, 2010. - MAHMOUD ZAYAT/AFP/Getty Images
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Ali Hashem
@alihashem_tv
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For years, Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyeh remained a ghost. Many had heard of him but only a few had met him outside the inner circles of his organization. Even then he wasn’t known by his real name, but rather by his alias, Hajj Radwan.

Even within the ranks of Hezbollah, many didn’t know that their military commander was the same Imad Mughniyeh who topped, alongside Osama bin Laden, the world's "most wanted" lists. It was only on Feb. 13, 2008, that they discovered who Hajj Radwan really was, when Al-Manar TV reported that he had been assassinated in Damascus by a car bomb the day prior.

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