According to several sources, including
Serge Groussard and Simon Reeve, Afif claimed that his own personal reason for taking the Israelis hostage was to get his two brothers out of Israeli prisons. He was described by Manfred Schreiber, chief of the Munich police and one of the German negotiators, as "very cool and determined, clearly fanatical in his convictions"; someone who expressed his demands in a forceful manner and at times "sounded like [one of] those people who aren't completely anchored in reality." Various photos of the hostage crisis show Afif wearing a white beach hat and a linen safari suit, with his face covered in charcoal or shoe polish. To Walther Tröger, then-mayor of the Olympic Village, Afif gave the impression of being an "intelligent and reasonable man," unlike his comrades, who in the eyes of the Olympic official were "gallow birds" (German:
Galgenvögel). Tröger said he obviously did not like Afif because of what he was doing, but he could have liked him if he had met him elsewhere. Afif spent most of his time in front of 31
Connollystraße, chatting with either the German delegation or the young police officer Anneliese Graes. According to Graes, Afif spoke fluent German with a French accent. She described him as "always polite and correct". When he was asked not to wave his hand grenade in front of her, he simply laughed and replied, "you have nothing to fear from me". After tense negotiations, the hostage crisis ended after 21 hours, with a bungled ambush of the hostage takers at
Fürstenfeldbruck airbase outside of Munich. Afif and four of his compatriots were killed by German snipers, but not before machine-gunning all nine remaining hostages and blowing up a helicopter containing four of them with a hand grenade. Afif is reported in most accounts of the event (and depicted in the films
Munich and
21 Hours at Munich) as the guerrilla who threw the hand grenade into the eastern helicopter. Autopsy reports show that the hostages in this helicopter were shot as well; it stands to reason that Afif performed both actions. Another
fedayeen, identified by Simon Reeve as
Adnan Al-Gashey, machine-gunned the remaining hostages in the western helicopter seconds later. The bodies of Afif and his four compatriots were turned over to
Libya, and after a procession from
Martyrs' Square, Tripoli, they were buried at the Sidi Munaidess Cemetery. ==In popular culture==