THE CAR-BOMB assassination in Damascus of terrorist mastermind Imad Mughniyeh will mean different things to different parties. But for anyone who cherishes the sunlight of legal justice, Mughniyeh's obscene career and violent end should be emblems of a lawless netherworld where terrorists kill civilians and security services hunt the killers.

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Mughniyeh, who was operations chief for the Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hezbollah, has a long rap sheet. He was behind the 1985 hijacking of a TWA passenger jet that lasted 17 days and included the killing of US Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem. American investigators hold Mughniyeh responsible for the 1983 bombings of US Marine and French paratrooper barracks in Beirut, killing more than 300, and also for 63 more deaths in a bomb attack the same year at the US embassy in Beirut.

During the mid-'80s, Mughniyeh led an Iranian-sponsored group in Lebanon known as Islamic Jihad, a gang that kidnapped dozens of American and other Western hostages. It was to ransom some of those hostages that Ronald Reagan sold missiles to Iran in the so-called Iran-Contra scandal.

Mughniyeh was indicted in Argentina for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that took 85 lives. And an arrest warrant was issued for him in connection with the 1992 bombing in Buenos Aires of the Israeli embassy.

Illustrating the inverted value system of the terrorist netherworld, Hezbollah's TV station al-Manar issued a statement yesterday saying, "With pride and honor, we announce the martyrdom of a great resistance leader who joined the procession of martyrs in the Islamic resistance."

The official American reaction was the antithesis of Hezbollah's, reflecting Mughniyeh's past standing atop this country most-wanted terrorist list, with a bounty of $25 million on his head. Today he is second only to Osama bin Laden. "The world is a better place without this man in it," said a State Department spokesman yesterday. "One way or another, he was brought to justice."

Israel, for its part, denied killing Mughniyeh. Whether it did or not, Israel is already being blamed by Hezbollah and its allies in Iran and Syria. There is almost certain to be a retaliatory strike against Israel that Hezbollah will call revenge for the execution of Mughniyeh.

Hezbollah and its Iranian backers can be expected to target Israel whether or not they obtain proof the Damascus bombing was an Israeli operation. They know that the secret services of several Western and Arab capitals also had scores to settle with Mughniyeh. But in the shadow world of terrorists and counterterrorists there are no rules of evidence, no presumption of innocence, and no legal justice. This is why the fight against terrorism must include a foreign policy that fosters the rule of law around the world.