The U.S. Department of State's Rewards for Justice program is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the location or identification of Salim Jamil Ayyash, a senior operative in the assassination unit of the terrorist organization Lebanese Hizballah, or information leading to preventing him from engaging in an act of international terrorism against a U.S. person or U.S. property.
Ayyash is a senior operative in Hizballah's Unit 121, the group's assassinations squad which receives its orders directly from Hizballah leader Hasan Nasrallah. Ayyash is known to have been involved in efforts to harm U.S. military personnel.
On December 11, 2020, an international tribunal sentenced Ayyash in absentia to five concurrent sentences of life imprisonment on terrorism-related charges pertaining to the February 2005 suicide truck bombing in Beirut that killed Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The attack also killed 21 others and wounded 226 persons.
The tribunal found that Ayyash led the 'assassination team' that carried out the attack on Hariri and was actively involved in the assassination on the day of the attack.
Ayyash was born November 10, 1963 in Harouf, Lebanon. He has resided in multiple areas of Lebanon including Hadath, Nabatiyyeh, and Beirut's southern suburbs.
