Islamic Liberation Organization
ISLAMIC LIBERATION ORGANIZATION
Palestinian movement (Munazamat al-Tahrir al-Islamiya, in Arabic), founded in 1971 by Salah Sarriya, Fatah member and dissident of the Islamic Liberation Party (ILP). Following the Arab defeat of June 1967, Salah Sarriya went to Egypt, where, with a few members of the Muslim confraternities, he created a number of underground Islamic cells. On 18 April 1974, he attempted a coup in Heliopolis, so as to take power in Egypt and proclaim the foundation of an Egyptian Islamic state. The attack on the military barracks failed, at a cost of around forty deaths, and Salah Sarriya was captured, then hanged in November 1976, along with Talal Ansari, head of a cell of the movement at the University of Alexandria. The death of Sarriya resulted in the disappearance of his movement. In 1977, some of his followers participated in the creation of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
SEE ALSO Arab-Israel War (1967);Fatah, al-;Islamic Liberation Party.