Thousands Alive, Thanks to ‘Bomb Magician’ : Lebanon: Youssef Bitar has saved a lot of people in the civil war. He has defused enough bombs ‘to blow up New York City.’

They call Warrant Officer Youssef Bitar, formerly of the French Foreign Legion, the “bomb magician.” He calls himself a “bomb charmer.”

Either name fits, for he has defused more than 2,000 terrorist bombs in Lebanon’s 14-year-old civil war, probably more than any other demolitions specialist.

Bitar, who also fought the Germans with Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s Free French forces in World War II, has survived three assassination attempts by terrorists whose actions he has thwarted, been shot twice and blown up by a mine--all for the equivalent of $200 a month and free gasoline.

“If all the bombs he’s defused had gone off, the death toll of the civil war would have more than doubled,” said a police colonel, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Bitar is indispensable.”

More than 150,000 people have been killed in the civil war, hundreds of them in car bombings.

When car bombs explode before he can get to them, Bitar can usually tell after examining the blast scene how much explosive was used, sometimes even the type.

Bitar, 61, has defused 300 car bombs outside hospitals, airline offices, newspaper buildings, embassies, government ministries, movie theaters, churches and mosques.

Most of the others were time bombs planted in jetliners, supermarkets, banks, schools, universities and gasoline stations.

Bitar estimates the total explosive weight of the bombs he had defused since 1975 at more than 100 tons, “enough to blow up New York.”

Bitar is a Greek Catholic. But he defies Lebanon’s Christian-Muslim sectarian barriers and regularly races across Beirut’s dividing Green Line to the Muslim sector dodging shells and sniper fire to defuse bombs.

The biggest bomb he has dismantled was in the Bir Hassan district of West Beirut in 1983. It contained 1,320 pounds of TNT with four Katyusha rockets attached to it, enough to pulverize a city block.

Bitar said it was apparently planted by the Israelis before they withdrew from west Beirut after their 1982 invasion.

“That was probably the worst disaster I’ve prevented,” he said in an interview in his elegant penthouse apartment in the Sad el-Boushrieh district of Christian East Beirut.

The stocky Bitar sat stroking his Siamese cat Rambo on his lap as he talked dispassionately about his spine-chilling exploits, gesticulating with hands missing three fingertips.

He lost a fingertip on his right hand when he grabbed a detonator, taken from a bomb he had defused, that a police officer was playing with. It exploded in Bitar’s hand.

He lost two fingertips on his other hand in 1982 when he stepped on a mine after he had defused a bomb in a Palestinian guerrilla base in the mountains overlooking Beirut. He was also wounded in the chest and feet.

“That cost me three months in hospital,” Bitar said.

Talking of his nerve-racking exploits seemed somehow incongruous amid the comfortable domesticity of Persian carpets, brass ornaments and exotic Oriental decor in his marble-floored lounge.

Bitar joined the Foreign Legion as a teen-ager when Lebanon was still ruled by France and served with special forces and demolition teams in North Africa and Europe.

“I was with De Gaulle’s Free French forces in Algeria when I heard about the American atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945,” he recalled. “It sort of kindled my interest in explosives.”

After joining the Lebanese army in 1946, Bitar became Lebanon’s top explosives expert. But he really came into his own when the civil war erupted in 1975 and the car bombings started.

“I operate with great faith in God,” Bitar said. “But I rely mainly on intuition--and a little bit of luck.”

“I can tell the kind of bomb I’ve got to tackle the moment I see it. I try to disconnect it as quickly as possible. I feel as if it’s placed under the bed of one of my children,” he said.

“I never panic. From the moment I see the bomb, I know what has to be done.

“The bombs don’t frighten me. But I’m always afraid of the people who planted them.”

Bitar said the first assassination attempt against him came as he was defusing a car bomb in the Barbir neighborhood of Muslim west Beirut on Sept. 19, 1975.

“Two bullets hit my neck and chest, but I managed to finish dismantling the bomb before I collapsed. I stayed two months in a hospital that time.”

Gunmen shot at him and missed, three years later, as he was defusing a bomb near the entrance to a movie house in the Muslim sector.

The third assassination attempt was in 1985 while he was visiting the Helou police station in west Beirut.

“Someone tossed a hand grenade into the room,” he said. “I threw myself to the floor to grab it and threw it out the window into the parking lot. No one was hurt.”

Bitar was retired from the army in 1980, but was immediately hired by the Defense Ministry.

“I don’t think of quitting,” he said. “When I look in the eyes of people when I arrive to tackle a bomb, I see their faith in me. I’ll fight the bombers as long as I live.”