14 October 2001

Rahman Hamad was responsible for dispatching the terrorists who carried out the suicide attack at the Dolphinarium discotheque on June 1, 2001, in which 21 young people were killed and over 100 were injured, as well as for the suicide attack at the Neve Yemin gas station in which two boys were killed and several injured.

Information about Rahman's involvement in these attacks and in the planning of additional suicide bombings was conveyed on several occasions to the Palestinian Authority, which arrested him and two of his accomplices, but released him on August 5, 2001.

Immediately upon his release, Rahman became once again actively involved in the planning of a suicide bombing attack which was to take place in the coming days.

Rahman Hamad was born in 1968, and was a senior member of the Hamas military arm in Kalkilya. He had been expelled to Lebanon in 1992, and was held in detention in the past because of his involvement in the suicide bombing on the No. 5 bus in Tel-Aviv on October 19, 1994.