Background
Abu Talb was born in Port Said in Egypt. He was a soldier in the Egyptian Army and also received training in the Soviet Union. He joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1970. He has asserted that he deserted from the Egyptian Army in the mid-1970s and thereafter fled to Lebanon via Jordan with a false passport. He joined the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF) in 1974 and participated on its side during the early stages of the Lebanese Civil War. There, he rose to the rank of lieutenant, commanding a 100-member security detail. He also went to Beirut, where he was wounded in fighting in 1976 and spent the next two years studying politics and economics at the University of Beirut.
In 1986, Abu Talb arrived in Sweden from Syria with his wife and child on a false Moroccan passport, under the name of Belaid Massoud Ben Hadi, and was granted political asylum there. He settled in Uppsala and ran a store specializing in Arab foods and videotapes.
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